Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen.

A video from 2004 shows a Texas judge beating his daughter with a belt, and America acts like it's surprised those words are in the same sentence.

Well that was unpleasant.

There's no point in saying what has already been said 678418 times, so let's do something else. BTW, why are all the "Related Videos" MMA clips?

II.

First, let's double back on our souls. If you want to learn why you think whatever it is you think, strip away existing context and force it into a new one and see what happens. In this case, assume this video is a fake.

Which is surprisingly easy to do: the dialogue is terrible-- stock phrases probably indicative of narcissistic rage (lines appropriate to his movie) but also of amateur screenwriting, and though the hits are real plenty of actresses would be willing to take them if the movie was going to open during Oscar season.

So now your reaction does not have the luxury of pretending it is based on actual events; those feelings are exclusively inside you. So, are you feeling empathy for her, or rage against him?

III.

It's surprising that "in this day and age" people still look at videos and news stories as if they are actual representations of reality. Say it's real: since she knows there's a hidden camera over there, is it possible she decides, oh, I don't know, to play up the damsel in distress and not throw a chair at him or not blow pot smoke in his face or not reveal that what she illegally downloaded was lesbian porn? "Oh my God! That's no excuse for him beating her!" Of course I'm not excusing what he did, I'm not even talking about what he did, I talking about why America is obsessed with this.

Do me the respect of admitting to whoever is drinking a latte next to you that if these people were black, you'd have a whole different reaction. If you even had any reaction, because most probably this video would have sunk to the bottom of the Sea Of Youtube with only one comment that said, "what's amazing about this video is that the father is actually still living there."

You want to see superb belt technique go visit a Toys-R-Us in an inner city, and I have a weird feeling that the reason wannabe gangstas never wear belts is because of negative reinforcement. Furthermore, after carefully reviewing the data coming from every black comic ever those kids are getting a beat down from their moms as well, proving my thesis that if you punch a white girl it becomes a Breaking News, punch a black kid and it's hilarious. And let me offer without further comment a phrase you will inevitably hear the first time you try and slap your black girlfriend: "don't you raise your hand to me, you fucking nigger, you ain't my daddy."

I'm making this point not because I want to be on the Jon Stewart show, but to point out that our reaction to the video isn't about right and wrong but about identification. And when the media elicits your identification, it is never about what you like but about what you hate.

Jim Hopper, a clinical instructor
in psychology at Harvard Medical School and a child abuse expert, said
there is no doubt that the judge's actions crossed the line.

"This
is an act of brutal violence," Hopper said. "To beat someone into
submission is not discipline. To beat a child into submission makes it
harder for that child to take in rules and the values that the parent
believes they are imposing on the child."

Jim Hopper's a pussy. Can I say that on the internet? Note that the sentences do not logically follow one another. Is it brutal because it fails as a discipline tool? Does it fail as a tool because it is brutal? He is not offering any insight into what happened, just repeating the feel-good non-sequitors that got America into this mess in the first place.

Properly understood, the beating has nothing to do with discipline at all, the discipline is an excuse for a discharge of rage that was already there and was coming out one kind of way or another. That's why when he leaves the room after beating her he is relaxed, relieved. "Finally, now I can sleep!" People have felt compelled to point out that "all she did was download music" as if they were looking for some level of crime that would fit the punishment but that's precisely the point, there isn't any, it's not about the crime but the excuse to hit something, which is why I would advise my clients who appear before him for sentencing to be as deferential and as respectful as possible, explicitly, verbally, recognize his authority, because he will most likely be a softie about any kind of crime that does not reflect badly on himself. Got it? Beat your kid and he'll sentence you to life, rob a bank or plead psychiatry and you'll be back on the streets in 48 hours. But bump a pretty woman wearing just the right kind of white heels and just the right shade of red lipstick and you may as well swallow your fingernail clippings, justice will be done.

IV.

Someone, e.g. the daughter Hillary, is at some point going to note the irony that her father punished her for using the internet, and she was then able to use the internet to punish him back. But that's not how it's going to play out, not with narcissism.

Sure, initially he's going to feel very ashamed that everyone sees him this way. But prior to the premiere, he had to carry around the secret of her beatings, and if there was any chance he ever felt guilty or perhaps thought that at times he was excessive, what he will do now is find enough (>1) anonymous (= "objective, they don't even know me") people who say, "well, it's not that bad" and poof, guilt gone. Crowdsourcing the superego means never having to say you're sorry. Never mind 99% of the comments and articles want him registered on a database, those guys are idiots or liberals or the media or whatever, he'll align himself with the 1% and walk proudly down the sidewalk. "Not only do people know I didn't do anything wrong, now I know it as well. Thanks, Hillary. I feel a lot better."

Furthermore, there is the very real probability that public is going to go Rebecca Black on her, finding it first progressive to hate the father, but as soon as the "we have to fight child abuse" crowd joins in it will be way cooler to turn around and support him. If there is one thing Americans hate more than a father beating his daughter it's finding themselves in agreement with people they can't stand.

The other equally likely possibility is that the exposure, the narcissistic injury, is going to be too much for him and he will kill himself. America may cheer this outcome but I suspect Hillary will be at least ambivalent.

"I'm very relieved that these things have been brought to light and not
because I want to see my father burn or anything like that. That's a
hideous way of thinking and I don't want to inflict that upon him," [Hillary]
said. "I cannot stress enough -- I cannot repeat myself enough, that he
just needs help."

Sorry, not buying it. I understand and empathize, believe me I do, but there's only rage in those words, and I am predicting the future by telling you it is of no consequence to him and suicide for you. I'm going to be hated by everyone for saying this, but there is an important difference between what happened to you and how you use what happened to you, and one of those you have to live with and the other one everyone else has to live with. And you will never be free.

If all rage comes from narcissism and narcissism is the broadcasting of a chosen identity, what identity is she broadcasting? Victim. Even if youtubing her abuse is somehow cathartic, it reinforces victim as an important part of her identity to herself, and this will infect every single relationship she has forever, from husband to kids to dog to God. Again, I am making a distinction between the abuse affecting her, and unconsciously defining herself by the abuse. After a few years of rehearsing you will no more be able to get rid of that trauma and expect to get on with life than you can pull the power source out of Megatron and expect he'll be able to turn into a jet. So I am telling her early, and I am telling you early, you who have nothing to do with these people but still feel not sympathetic but enraged, as much as you want him to suffer that desire is hurting you. I understand it, I respect it, I get it. But it will kill you. Forgiveness at any cost is the only way out.

Comments

I definitely agree with the conclusion that forgiveness is the only way out. However, the simple question I have to ask of the father is: What result do you expect out of your children when treating them in this manner.

You could even take the belt lashing out... just listening to him verbally. As you pointed out, it's filled with rage. There's no thought process or mindful consideration of the actions and consequences, it's simply a beating fueled by adrenaline and rage.

For what it's worth, I'm not against raising a hand to a child... but this doesn't qualify as such, at least given the information I have via the video.

Forgiveness at the cost of justice. That irritates me. I still want him to get help, but I feel like the world is not right when he isn't put in jail. Then again I've heard enough stories from enough people about bigger injustices than this... No hitting, right?

Why do inner city poor people beat their children? Is that a bad thing? Does that create problems?

First of all, I feel sick after reading your post. Truly my stomach is a bit flipsy. The video was bad enough, and then listening to your grotesque take on it was like a sprinkle of paprika ontop, just a little extra intensity.

Second of all, feeling cringing aversion and shock and wincing when you watch a man beat a teenager is not about narcissism/identity you retard, it's a visceral reaction to violence. Violence, which is real, is gross, and makes you feel grossed out. I don't feel disgusted and aversive because I am a narcissist, I feel that way because i am a human with natural human feelings about violence - one who has not been brainwashed by some cult/military leader into accepting violence.

Also, feeling anger for him, and bad for her, is also normal and does not make anyone a narcissist.

I would tell you to quit your profession as you clearly hate people and don't care about pain and suffering, but seeing as this is consistent with all other psychiatrists, (just exploiting the insurance companies/medicaid) then you actually fit right in, so keep on doing a great job.

I have read your blog with interest for some time now. I just wanted to respond to one point in this entry, which is your assertion that in the context of his role as acting Judge, this man would be lenient on crimes with which he bears no experiential relation and harsh on crimes of which he (on some level) feels guilty.

Apparently, links circulating (see Reddit) suggest the opposite may be true. I have not independently verified but thought you might want to consider it. From a commenter: "...Not only did he hardly ever put anyone in jail for abuse, he made several rulings on cases where the custodial parent had abuse or psychiatric issue and he sided with them on the basis that children could not be credible witnesses in abuse cases and/or that no video or photographic evidence was presented. Reddit has links to the cases and it's sickening. ..."

"Also, feeling anger for him, and bad for her, is also normal and does not make anyone a narcissist."

Anger against an abuser and sympathy for the victim is one thing, rage and seeing it as an identity issue is another. I don't think TLP is saying we should be cold, but that we should think about why we react the way we do.

Who would not feel upset seeing such a thing? But did you feel rage or anger? Did some part inside you click with the realization that you can use this to show off your disgust to project the identity of a good person? Would you feel personally threatened to find out the video was not what you assumed it was or wanted it to be; and if so, why?

A) Why forgiveness instead of,say,vengeance?
B) What's with the vein of christianity, or christian themes that run through your writing? This forgiveness spiel, the analysis of the story of abraham and isaac, constant reference to God. What's up with that?

This is not a savage beating. It is a father disciplining a willfully disobedient child. Personally I still believe in corporal punishment, but I understand that some people more learned than I in the field of child rearing and psychology do not endorse it. Okay, I'll accept that.
However, whether he is correct or incorrect in his method of doing so, he is still only attempting to instill morals in her. He calmly states at the beginning of the tape "I am going to spank her now."
This was not an act of rage. It was a parental decision. Does he seem to lose his temper a bit during the act? Sure. But I'd like to see you try to administer physical punishment to a resisting offender and not lose your temper a bit in the process.
She only got hit on the arms and legs because she deliberately put them in the way of her buttocks. She knew the spanking was coming; it was her decision to refuse to cooperate and receive a lick as she was told. In the end, the father punished his daughter and left the room. He did not appear to enjoy the ordeal--though I doubt it truly "hurt him more than it hurt her" as my father used to claim.

Good question. Of course, in good psychotherapy vengeance leads to forgiveness, AKA "the only way out is through".

Back to the post -- it's my understanding that identification/reactions are based on an individual's phenomenology, the fancy word for "life experience". But lots of people are abused by their parents, not all will denounce them for it.

Perhaps those who have experienced emotional pain from paternal abuse are likely to empathize with the daughter, others who have sanctioned ("forgiven") abuse at the hands of their parents are likely to side with the father.

I find it odd that none of the TLP's rationale or comments include the age inappropriateness of physical discipline.

Spanking a child is necessary for *some* young children, typically when they're too young to comprehend logical discipline. E.g., a spanking when they consistently run into the street. Spanking once or twice and without pain or anger will usually be enough of a shock to make the child cease a particular behavior. As they get old enough to take verbal direction, spankings become inappropriate. Beating a teenager is so far over the line it seems rhetorical to even discuss it.

Beating an adolescent with a non-lethal weapon is criminal. This 16 year old girl knows that, and filmed it to abate what was clearly predictable behavior on the parents part.

I'm sorry man, don't take this personally, but you don't get it. This post is exactly FOR YOU.

The problem is that the amount of anger you feel towards the dad outweighs the sympathy you feel for her.

You've found some way to unleash your unrelated aggression and watching this makes you feel both bad AND good. I know because I felt the same way when I watched the video. And now it is going to infect how you carry yourself once you log out of your computer.

The language the father used throughout the episode could be coming directly from the school of Christian parenting that is associated with the book "To Train Up a Child." It strongly recommends using physical discipline and achieving submission. There is a whole somewhat underground culture of that style of discipline, especially in the south. Personally I found the book inspiring and I using that philosophy in raising my own children, but the father here is giving a very strong counter-example. The method insists on the parent being calm and considerate while administering the discipline, and also advises that if you're still having to do it over age about 12 you've probably already failed beyond salvation. This man is not disciplining, he is venting. Totally self-centered, parenting fail.

She is capable of forgiveness. She was on the Today Show for 10 minutes this morning, seated next to her mom, who we saw beat and verbally abuse her on the video. The 2 of them were all about love and healing in what was clearly a working relationship.

So much for the impenetrable, disordered, unforgiving narcissist, incapable of getting passed shit.

Is this opposite day? Because what seems truly narcissistic to me is what TLP is promoting in the implication that one need forgive out of some non-relational, self-generated internal mechanism, rather than getting to that place in relationship to the offender, by human interaction, as Hillary has with her mother. Which is also exceptional, but hardly fits the prevailing and thoroughly batshit theory.

"Sorry, not buying it. I understand and empathize, believe me I do, but there's only rage in those words, and I am predicting the future by telling you it is of no consequence to him and suicide for you. I'm going to be hated by everyone for saying this, but there is an important difference between what happened to you and how you use what happened to you, and one of those you have to live with and the other one everyone else has to live with. And you will never be free.

If all rage comes from narcissism and narcissism is the broadcasting of a chosen identity, what identity is she broadcasting? Victim. Even if youtubing her abuse is cathartic in some way, it reinforces victim as an important part of her identity to herself, and this will infect every single relationship she has forever, from husband to kids to dog to God. Again, I am making a distinction between the abuse affecting her, and unconsciously defining herself by the abuse."

Fuck, Alone, you scare me sometimes.

Righ on the spot.

Last time, you talked about my father, now this?

Fuck...

=

"So, are you feeling empathy for her, or rage against him?"

Why not both?

I lived something like she did... and victimized myself for a while... but not want to spank that bastard is absolutely impossible for me.

"Just before the YouTube upload, Judge Adams told his daughter he was unwilling to continue supporting her financially because the young piano prodigy wasn’t living up to her potential, instead dropping out of school and working part time at a video game store.

“Hillary warned her father if he reduced her financial support and took away her Mercedes automobile, which her father had provided, he would live to regret it,” Dudley said. “The post was then uploaded.”"

"So I am telling her early, and I am telling you early, you who have nothing to do with these people but still feel not sympathetic but enraged, as much as you want him to suffer that desire is hurting you. I understand it, I respect it, I get it. But it will kill you. Forgiveness at any cost is the only way out."

Who should I, who have nothing to do with these people, forgive him? That's just as sick as being enraged, it's just another form of identification. I'll save my rage, or forgiveness, for the people in my own life. In the meantime I applaud Hillary's revenge -- I'm sure it did her some good.

Can't believe no one has pointed out the Identification with the Oppressor of the mother yet. By the 3rd word she spoke, I knew she was a victim of abuse herself. She completely fused her identity to that of Judge Adams to protect herself.

I'm new-ish to this blog, but I'm a survivor of sexual, physical, and mental abuse at the hands of my father, and all I can say is that Alone's right. There is no such thing as revenge when the perpetrator is your own father and your mother is victimized into a codependent role. In my case my father was also an alcoholic and addicted to pain killers, and he tried to blame it all on that. It took me decades to finally forgive him. Luckily I did it while he was still alive. I tried revenge, I tried to punish him in a lot of ways, but it never really hurt him and it did so much damage to me and my marriage.When I counsel other survivors I tell them that they don't justify what he did and they don't take blame for what they did but at the same time can't keep r

Many people here are confusing anger and rage. Anger is specific. She did something bad, I am angry at her. Maybe this guy was angry, I don't know, I'm not going to watch the video. Rage is broad and undirected; an irrational response to rational things that you, as a person, are not able to address in any other fashion (someone above asked why inner city families beat their children: there's your answer)

Before I reacted, or posted a response, I googled the dude's name. FACE IS VISIBLE IN VIDEO. FAT FACE IN VIDEO MATCHES HIS PRESENTLY OWNED FAT FACE. Verdict: guilt.

Once i realized this was real, then the floodgates opened with anger/disgust/sympathy for the kid.

No, I am not "projecting the image of a good person", just a human one. Most humans probably feel the way I do. SIck in the stomach watching this big fat fuck beat a little girl up for no reason at all (wut, she went on the computer, big deal fatass)... and then watching the flat assed mother egg him on herself to vent her frustrations. She was probably just glad he was taking it out on the kid tonight, and not her. It was unsavory and unpleasant . My feelings are purely a reaction to them, it has nothing to do with me.

So much of what this dude TLP posts is clearly more about his own issues that he falsely assumes apply to everyone else. After reading this blog for this amount of time, it's obvious the guy has a major deficit in being able to feel emotions and relate to people, so when he watched this video it is very likely he didn't much feel the way other people (normal people) do. Like "Oh that is gross and horrible I wish this would stop" and "What an abusive fat fuck of a bully, beating up a kid for no reason" and "poor kid having to live with him" and so on.

Instead, it seems he felt - nothing - and then proceeds to judge everyone who did have normal emotions/label them identity driven. Because, see, aparently having normal human emotions means you are a narcissist now, I suppose. This reveals more about TLP than anyone else. FACT: People can feel things which have nothing at all to do with identity. TLP seems as if he can't even understand this concept, he consistently labels all emotions/reactions as being the product of misidentification or egos gone wild, he consistently presents the argument that feelings are always about the person expressing the feelings, when this is insane and so antithetical to being human, one has to ask if TLP is himself is somehow emotionally defective.

A random commenter on the internet should not have to tell a so called "psychiatrist" that emotions are valid and don't always, or even often, have to do with ego.

The worst part is how the mindless drones on this forum eat up and agree with everything he says, no matter how insane.

I think, the argument TLP presented here, says more about his own pathological lack of feelings, empathy, and/or narcissism than it does anyone else.

"It would never in a million years occur to me that all (or even most) rage comes from narcissism."

AGREED.

There are lots of reasons one might feel rage, and I think the commonality to all of them is a feeling of powerlessness, intense emotions you can't control or express in any other way. Some kind of ego injury is one reason, but there are many many more.

If , for example, someone horribly attacked and killed a family member, I imagine that eventually after shock and sadness and all of those emotions, I would probably feel uncontrollable rage against the person and would want to kill them. Not because of "ego injury", but because my e motions and powerless is so great that it boils over in anger, rage. Acting out in violence against someone else is a way of regaining control and diffusing emotions. This is why the man is beating the kid - he is taking his own personal shit out on her. He is upset she is almost a woman and he can't control her. He is upset he can't control any of his own emotions and reactions, as well, all he can do is beat people and threaten them.

This is why people beat and abuse and control - it is a method of mastering intolerable emotions they are otherwise powerless over. If you can hold power over another human, and make them cringe and beg and cry, then you are restored and for awhile feel less powerless yourself.

To say that ALL rage is from narcissism, is to crazily assume that all extreme emotions are also from narcissism, when this is clearly crazy and insane and not true.

For example, a common reason people develop into abusers, violent, controlling, aggressive types is because they themselves were abused and never learned how to cope with that feeling of powerlessness, domination. They never learned how to diffuse their own emotions and cope with them in a healthy way. SO, in a cycle, they continue the pattern of finding someone smaller to beat the shit out of, to feel normal again.

I mean, you do need a certain level of normal narcissism in order to feel rage - which is why eastern/Buddhist types are passive and nonviolent. In order to feel rage, you need to be able to identify yourself and feel separate. It takes the capacity to recognize difference, non-self, potential threat and adversity in order to be a rageful violent bag of shit. So, it is true some semblance of ego and ego identification is a prerequisite to feel rage... but it is grossly, untrue, and crazy to say all rage is narcissistic.

The commonality in all feelings of anger/violence/rage is powerlessness, plus overwhelming "bad" feelings of being threatened and wronged somehow. If one feels in control, there will be no impulse to rage. If one does not feel threatened/wronged
there will be no impulse to rage.

Feeling anger against this guy is actually evidence against narcissism, because it suggests an ability to empathize with the girl - the feelings of anger are a result of you feeling how she might have felt (powerless and wronged), so you react with rage as if you were the one being attacked by him (when in reality, you are just vicariously watching it, and empathizing with the victim, thus feeling rage in response).

The lack of empathy individual would feel no rage, no anger, because he would not/could not/ emotionally put himself in the girl's position. This actually argues more for narcissism than does the response of extreme anger, which argues against narcissism (although, perhaps, does suggest power coping with emotions/being excessively emotional).

@BM
No one pointed it out because it was obvious this was a beating, abusive, and not discipline. YOu do not "discipline" a child for nearly 10 minutes, with a belt, for a minor transgression (using the computer when you were not allowed to). Even if the kid was 6 and not 16 it still would be abusive. I mean it doesn't take a rocket scientist to identify what is discipline and what's abuse. Taking sadistic pleasure in scaring and threatening a kid for no reason is abuse.

The fact that she was almost an adult just made it so much more obvious that he was beating her down for fun.

I do think the fact she is older might have inspired the beating. He even says as much: "You used to be an obedient little girl". Part of his rage, seems to be, his fury that she is developing into an adult that he can't control anymore the way he can a child. This triggers feelings of powerlessness and threatening that lead to beating.

She probably hates him, got fed up of him, and decided to try to ruin him. Can't blame her. He might have still been trying to manipulate and control her even now.

Not everything is about identity, this blog is full of crazy people. Emotions are complex, as are motivations, and they can't all boil down to identity.

Have any of you been beaten like t hat by your parents, for no reason at all, clearly just because your father was an abusive controlling rage freak? If not, how can you even begin to judge her? This was not an isolated incident, she probably grew up with that like every day. I can imagine, after years of it, getting to the point where you're like "fuck you, hypocrite: now the world knows you are exactly the same kind of criminal you send to jail".

An angry person can sit in their room and cry about being angry, but they won't necessarily get a baseball bat and freak out with it.

A rageful person, on the other hand, is feeling the same bad feelings as an angry person, except they also are prone to fuck things up in response. A rageful person will destroy a room, push you infront of a bus, shoot you in the head, punch you in the face, etc.

The difference between anger and rage is intent to act in response.

Rage is associated with "broad and undirected anger" only because if one is pushed to the point of rage, it can be said that they are probably not lucid/clear/rational so their anger feelings may also be irrational or not specifically defined. If feelings of anger boil over into rage, then ANYTHING can be a target for the rage -- however, the original catalyst for rage is specific just as it is for anger.

Rage is, basically, when you lose control of anger. It is an escalation. Once you get to the point of rage, it's typically not controlled ad often excessive, which is why rage is associated with recklessness/lack of focus.

This is sort of how psychotic depression is an escalation of melancholic depression. It's what happens if the later boils over, you get the former (severe depression), and then you are dealing with this new problem because it boiled over (crazy brain, in addition to previous depression).

Consider the judge's leniency towards those accused of child abuse/mistreatment, as well as the events that preceded the publication of the video (he stopped supporting her financially because she wasn't "living up to her potential"). From those two additional data points you get a different interpretation. It seems to suggest that the level of violence on display wasn't some spur-of-the-moment, 'hot temper' event, but instead grounded in the judge's philosophy on child-rearing.

That philosophy is essentially carrot-and-stick based, with inducements offered to act according to his wishes and punishments doled out for disobedience. It's not that his identity is challenged so he responds (in rage) with inappropriate violence of which he is later ashamed; to him he was never doing anything wrong in the first place. You might consider it monstrous, but perhaps you should learn to be more tolerant of the views of others.

I don't think she's fully rejected it. Her train of logic is even more problematic than clinical instructor in psychology Jim Hopper's:

"She has had ataxic cerebral palsy from birth that led her to a passion for technology, which was strictly forbidden by her father's backwards views."

Didn't you find that sentence in the video description utterly bizarre? The point of writing something like that is to 1) get people on your side by presenting objective proof of vulnerability (her condition), 2) put whatever it was about what precipitated this incident that had anything to do with her in a positive light ("passion for technology") and 3) use her father's remark that he doesn't care for computers to make it about something other than what she was specifically doing with the computer (piracy).

The video alone would convince most people that she's a victim of abuse. But she still feels the need to look for irrelevant reasons to reach that conclusion when the relevant ones are enough.

It seems like even a few commenters here took #3 at face value. Do you think her father's reaction to *piracy* is contingent on how much he sounds like a hick living in the stone age?

If you engage with him on the issue of #3, you grant him another way to dodge guilt. By focusing on his stated reason for the punishment, and especially by getting it *wrong*, you shift the focus away from the act and toward his justification. And then he can (rightly) say that those damn people out there on the internet are trying to paint him as a Luddite, and he can buy indulgences for the price of a Kindle, now only $79!

"The difference between anger and rage is intent to act in response."
Having no responses except repression and loss of control is a major part of narcissism, and results in fluctuating between these two extremes. Passive aggression and hostility to self actualization are strongly displayed, with an infinite perception of one's own personal physical and/or psychological space which overrides others'. A narcissist demonizes things they do not perceive as fitting into their own life, regardless with whether the things interfere with it.

Anger does not exclude intent to act at all. A healthy and angry person kept up late at night by neighbors will go over and knock on their door, telling them in a stern voice "It is 2am and I am trying to sleep. Keep it down!" Rage results in actions like punching the neighbor in the face, kicking down the neighbor's door, and yelling at the neighbor or others for unrelated things.

Anger is healthy and allows enough rationality to respond properly, and is like a rumbling against something. Rage is a knee-jerk reaction and feels more like a snap. The difference is far deeper than intensity or intent to act.

I would tell you to quit your profession as you clearly hate people and don't care about pain and suffering

Lucid. It's not his job to hold hands, talk about what is "gross" (awesome word choice, btw) and just bullshit about empathizing with a state he hasn't been in.

It is his job to remove the layers of noise and obfuscation that our society is applying and extract the underlying signal which reflects how a person is biologically wired. The primordial motives and impulses which once served as survival aids were chosen by evolution to be hardwired in, unaware that today's civilization and society would suddenly go exponential and dramatically upset how the system functions. You first need to understand these things to understand the problem, to fix the problem, to help the person.

TLP is first rate at this. You just see the noise and want to be the biggest peak. Welcome to being part of the problem.

Alone: "If all rage comes from narcissism..."
This is blatantly false, just ridiculous. There's not a shred of evidence for this, not as a rule and not as a generalization.

thestage: "Rage is broad and undirected; an irrational response to rational things that you, as a person, are not able to address in any other fashion"
Anger and rage are very EXPLICIT emotions -- "broad and undirected" my ass! And "inner city families" -- oh, them -- you're funny. Well, the correct answer is: they beat their kids because they don't empathize with them. Simple.

The word "rationality" means nothing to you. You don't know a damn thing about it in terms of psychology or philosophy. And your and so many other people's model of human behavior as "irrational and emotional" or "rational and cool" is just total nonsense.

Anonymous: "The difference between anger and rage is intent to act in response."
More linguistic sophistry. The difference is intensity. Thus, a little anger is a little motivating; a lot of anger is very motivating.

This is one of the most disturbing video clips I have ever seen, yet it certainly represents the reality for many families who are soooo sick behind the scenes and have a public persona. This moron justifies (to this day) what violence he perpetrates (he calls it "spanking" and talks about all the "stuff" he has given his daughter) This is no better than sexual abuse and from listening to it, I bet he is aroused during the whole thing. Barf.

I started reading this blog regularly because of original insights TLP had. This is no longer true it seems. Before I even started reading I whispered: "narcissm", "racism", "anger/rage".
You lost your broad insight, TLP. You've become single-minded in your own (unique - granted) way.
"You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain"

Zeb- violence is violence, whatever stupid method you are citing to justify YOUR bad behavior, whether you are calm (which is in fact more maladaptive) or out of control, unwanted touch is violence and is a control issue needing clinical intervention.

Forgiveness is the only way out, I agree. Not because it's the "right" thing to do, nor even because her parents "deserve" forgiveness. It's just the only way not to play their game.
Narcissistic parents don't want to be forgiven, because, well, there's nothing to forgive, they are perfect! That's precisely why she should forgive them and thus protect her own psychological integrity.

The problem is that, as they don't want to be forgiven, they will sabotage it at any cost. While there's a fight, people will always be able to take sides, including the narcissist's. It's easier to publicly fight one's own parents, if that's what they want (and that's what they want, because it will give them the chance to play the "ungrateful daughter" card forever, even if she has been ungrateful only in their heads), than to forgive, if forgiveness is not what the parents want. Kids end up doing what their parents want them to do.

When I was nine my grandmother asked me to go water her flowers. I protested that I didn't know how much to water or how much would be over or under watering them, but she told me to just go water them.

I was afraid of my grandmother because she would punish me for the slightest things. Unable to refuse without getting punished I trudged out and started watering the flowers. I didn't water them for long.

I first heard the screen door bang open and with trepedation I turned my head to look over my shoulder and I could see her stomping across the yard. She grabbed my arm and dragged me into the house, her nails cutting inside my triceps.

She broke two wooden spoons on my bony ass and that they broke was my fault. That she started swearing was my fault. She would both of my upper arms, curling her fingers under them and digging her nails inside my triceps. In her punishment she would always eventually ask, "Do you not want to be a good boy?"

I dreaded that question because there was no correct answer. "No" was saying "I don't want to be a good boy." "Yes" was saying "Yes, I do not want to be good boy." "I don't know" or crying was worse. The worst though was getting too comfortable saying yes or no, because apparently I had a smirk on my face.

I endured quite a lot of her punishment that day before I she finally told me what I had done wrong. I had had the hose between my legs and was therefore "imitating urinating on her flowers."

My grandmother punished me quite a lot between the age of (about) 4 till 13, when I finally blocked an attempted slap by her. After blocking her, she never physically tried to punish me but she was ever after vile and vendictive in speaking to me or about me (according to my 10 year younger brother).

When I was 18 I tried to have a conversation about all of this abuse by her with my father. It didn't go well and after punching my bedroom door my father asked me, "What do you want me to do, stop loving my mother?"

I tried not to bring her up but she would come up now and then. My father was proud of how she "taught" me my multiplication tables, which was absolutely one of the worst memories I have. In the end I figured I had three choices: 1) swallow it all though it felt like something eating me alive from the inside, 2) fight it, creating a lot of disharmony within the family, 3) walk away from all of my family knowing that many may not understand what was going on. While all of this is a bit of simplification of how I came to my choice, I choose the third option.

Forgiveness is an easy thing to say but somewhat naive. I think a big part of being able to forgive is first getting out from under the situation that needs to be forgiven. Empowered and in control of your life. Unless you have that I'm not sure it is ever really anything more than supplication.

I can say that I definitely felt a pressure to expose my grandmother and had I a video of her doing the stuff she did maybe I would have put it on youtube. I wouldn't do it to fill a role of being a victim, rather it would be to stop being a victim.

There are lots of people that will play the victim role for material gain. I just don't see that being the case here but I could be wrong.

It took me a very long time to get control of my life and still there are fingers that tickle at those memories now and then. I sincerely hope this helps her as much as I think it will.

On the video, the only one that really lost control was the man. Mother was in control and could have stopped the punishment at any time but when she thought the girl had had enough intervened. The girl was always in control. Father indeed lost control for most of the episode.
Yes, he is an ass in the video but,
I don't see any sense in punishing him now other than to get some sense of revenge for all the times we were abused by having to watch this crap on CNN and see Dr. Drew say that he is "sick".
The girl and her mom have made up and mother seems to have been very instrumental in setting the whole situation up along with the girl who planned the video session.
Hmmmm

I am surprised that there are so FEW people advocating for more brutal violence against children and adolescents. At least in America, brutal physical and psychological abuse is quite PREVALENT (it just happens behind closed doors, because if you do it in public, people will look down on you).

So, to see, what, only three or four broken-brained perverts (the first one of which is this feller "phillip") in the comment stream, advocating for abusive violence against children... is actually a GOOD thing. Almost a RECORD of sorts. Means our society is rejecting child abuse more and more. I'm fucking delighted at that.

---------------------------------------------

Another thing you will notice in child abusers and lots of victims of child abuse. They tend to rationalize their abuse to cope with it. It's an entirely dysfunctional mechanism, but the doublethink helps them survive their dysfunctional past. To use this feller "phillip" as an example:

Look at what he's saying, guys: '[...] though I doubt it truly "hurt him more than it hurt her" as my father used to claim. [...]'

Here, he's referencing the violent abuse that his father perpetrated on him. Isn't that evidence that he was violently abused as a child himself?

Then he goes: "This is not a savage beating. [...] This was not an act of rage. [...] Does he seem to lose his temper a bit during the act?"

Here, he's describing the exact OPPOSITE of what his eyes can see in the video. Isn't this evidence of outright denial?

He was abused as a child, so, in order to FUNCTION somewhat superficially as a human being, he NEEDS to rationalize this abuse away, and he NEEDS to enter a dissociative state whenever he is confronted with actions, events, facts that bring back these deeply buried memories of his own life.

He needs to do that, because the alternative would be to come to terms with the fact that he was abused repeatedly and violently by the person who was supposed to have his back and love him the most in the world... and that's just too fucking painful for him to do.

Ask yourselves this question: How much violent and savage abuse must this poor sap have sustained during his childhood? I mean, today, he sees a video that clearly depicts a sadistic man in rage, beating up a defenseless child with cerebral palsy.... and immediately afterwards, he feels the URGE, at ALL COSTS, even at the cost of UNDENIABLE, OBSERVABLE TRUTH, to say "well, it's not so bad, he didn't lose his temper, not a savage beating", to pretend that violent physical abuse is "love" or is "good".

And what about "phillip's" father? How can his phrase "it hurts me more than it hurts you" be interpreted as anything OTHER than a false moral excuse for using brutal violence against a defenseless person a quarter of his size? Seriously, a man beating up a child hurts the man more than it hurts the child? Gimme a fucking break, no, fuck no, that's not true, the only thing that is true is that the man is EVIL (because he does evil) and CORRUPT (because he justifies his evil with deliberate lies).

TLDR: How many times must a child be brutally beaten up by people who supposedly "love" him, for his brain to break so badly that it equates violent abuse with "good" and "necessary", and denies his own eyes? Hard to tell? Well, go ask "phillip". I'm sure he'll have an answer.

And I'm sure his answer will be very, very sad.

----------------------------------

Another thing I wanted to note. TLP seems to say that there can be no abandonment of rage without forgiveness. This is false. Given a definition of forgiveness as "Through your gesture of apology or whatnot, your debt with me has been repaid, and I, the forgiver, consider the rightful state of matters to have been restored" (which is consistent with the colloquial use), forgiveness solely for the purposes of avoiding rage oneself is FALSE forgiveness. It's simply deliberate self-deceit into a false state of fact "I consider that my aggressor has cured his aggression against me" when in fact it didn't happen. And self-deceit... well, do I need to say anything further about that?

Now that I'm reading the comment from this fellow "phillip" again, I'm actually quite surprised. He has managed to cram the entire polyfecta of child abusers in his comment. Look:

1. "my father did it to me"
2. "it hurts me more than it hurts you"
3. "it's her own damn fault for resisting abuse"
4. outright denial of facts ("despite the fact that he appears to be raging, he did not lose his temper")
5. self-contradiction with earlier statements ("try not to lose your temper while someone resists your violent aggression")
6. it's not abuse ("not a savage beating")
7. it's just discipline ("moral education")
8. the parent has the right to abuse their child / violently manhandle their child's body ("parental decision")
9. she deserved it
10. misrepresentative euphemisms for the victim ("offender") and the act ("receive a lick")
11. reference to false morals as justification ("disobedient")
12. the guy calmly states what he is going to do before the abuse (meaning: he is in control, he is abusing her deliberately)

I would be SURPRISED if his children weren't already permanently scarred in the brain from his abuse towards them. A person just CANNOT be this good of a troll.

1. "my father did it to me"
2. "it hurts me more than it hurts you"
3. "it's her own damn fault for resisting abuse"
4. outright denial of facts ("despite the fact that he appears to be raging, he did not lose his temper")
5. self-contradiction with earlier statements ("try not to lose your temper while someone resists your violent aggression")
6. it's not abuse ("not a savage beating")
7. it's just discipline ("moral education")
8. the parent has the right to abuse their child / violently manhandle their child's body ("parental decision")
9. she deserved it
10. misrepresentative euphemisms for the victim ("offender") and the act ("receive a lick")
11. reference to false morals as justification ("disobedient")
12. the guy calmly states what he is going to do before the abuse (meaning: he is in control, he is abusing her deliberately)

I would be SURPRISED if his children weren't already permanently scarred in the brain from his abuse towards them. A person just CANNOT be this good of a troll.

While the media is still pretending (i.e., is ironically) Modernist, this blog takes a post-modern perspective, which means that is is not about the "event" in question, but the 'texture' of the event ("the problem isn't x, it is y..." etc).

If the 'cure' for narcissism is to "fake it", the problem isn't, i don't think, the idea that you are constructing an 'identity', the problem is... what identity are you constructing? Who are you deciding to be? And if you aren't the one making the decisions, who is deciding for you, who is deciding who you are?

So, you have a reaction to the video, you have a gut feeling about what you 'witness', but where did that feeling come from, and where' does it become an opinion that you can talk about in the comment section of some blog? That I think is the whole ppiont?

"I can say that I definitely felt a pressure to expose my grandmother and had I a video of her doing the stuff she did maybe I would have put it on youtube. I wouldn't do it to fill a role of being a victim, rather it would be to stop being a victim.

There are lots of people that will play the victim role for material gain. I just don't see that being the case here but I could be wrong."

I can totally understand how you feel this way and it disgusts/frightens me that a 'psychiatrist", in charge of vulnreable broken people, can so badly mutilate his understanding of people's emotions and intents.

If I could expose the perpetrator of some violence or injustice against me, I would feel empowered in doing so. Never would I assume that doing this would make me a victim - a victim is someone who turns the other cheek and pretends to be above any sort of retribution. We all know the real reason people fail to retaliate is not because they forgive, or because they have transcended the abuse, but it's because deep down they are powerless and afraid to confront the abuser. Being able to do something like this, is a very symbolic liberating act screaming "I am not afraid of you any more, and now the whole world knows what you did and who you really are".

It amazes me how everyone is judging her. If I were in her situation, I would hope that I had the guts to do the same thing.

I suspect in many Chinese families(and some other Asian cultures such as Korean) this isn't seen as "abuse" but rather as "discipline" or "teaching respect". Which reinforces what I'v always thought - that Chinese and Western values are fundamentally different. Best solution? For Chinese to stay out of the West (except for holidays).

Then you're a fool. Guessing that in a blog about narcissism he's going to talk about narcissism is really stupid. What did you think he was going to talk about? He chooses stories about narcissism, so that he can talk explain it. I suspect you didn't like the insights because he was talking about you. His insight here that it's easier to hate the perpetrator than have any feelings for the victim are quite on point given the nature of the comments here.

Wow. This post is so full of bullsh*t (i'm editing my self here, lest some mod deletes the comment). The lest narcissistic thing a victim can do is expose the abuser - because of the shame and having to retell and relive the crime over and over again, and so on and so forth, this is so basic and obvious, i think everyone knows it by now. But when tho whole media thing goes away, she will be able to look herself in the mirror and think "i did the right thing". Also, "camera doesn't show the real picture" - yeah, let me paint you the whole picture: that beating is a routine event in the family: the camera is in place, the mother is trying to diffuse the situation (you lay down and i'll whip you... once, better me than your father - a weak ass attempt to protect someone, if you ask me) the daughter is playing it up for the camera - whining, but refusing to obey, escalating the whole thing (i'm not blaming her!, to pull this of takes a lot of courage), the father, believing he is doing this for discipline. The feelings were real the first 10 times or so, and what we see now is just a bad play, with actors that really suck, and it's been done over and over again. That's the whole picture, and it sickens me.
And what i feel - the same thing i always feel when preparing to fight somebody. Adrenaline. Makes the thought clearer, the eyesight better, the breathing deeper. You can keep the sympathy for later, and the anger for the action-movies. If you are going to do something physical in the real world you need to calculate the odds coldly and you need adrenaline, and the video made me feel like i was there and needed to do something. Analyse that, asshole.

Uh guys he's not talking about the incident he's talking about the reaction to the incident. "Pretend it's fake" is not an accusation it's an exercise to help you examine your own reaction to it. So just settle down with the outrage already.

For people who have arrived at this blog for the first time (this commenter seemingly included), this whole post is not talking about narcissism in the sense that your favorite magazine, or a funny internet picture talks about narcissism and TLP is not talking about grandiose self love.

As regular readers of TLP have mentioned before, the most interesting (and the most forgotten) part of the legend of Narcissus, is that while he fell for a reflection, he was completely unaware that the reflection was his own.

Firstly, he shares his desire to decide what media is real and what is fictionally constructed. He did this in another post, where he quite literally said that he wants to be able to judge the real world based on stereotypes he derived from a TV show. He starts off this piece by asking us to imagine the video is fake (it's not) and then proceeds a paragraph later from the assumption that it is (he knows it's not).

Please read along if you have any doubts and correct any of this if its incorrect. Don't just shout at it because you don't like it, actually go and read the original post and tell me if i'm wrong.

"Say it's real: since she knows there's a hidden camera over there, is it possible she decides, oh, I don't know, to play up the damsel in distress and not throw a chair at him or blow pot smoke in his face or reveal that what she illegally downloaded was lesbian porn?"

Look closely. TLP, who knows the video is real, asks us to imagine it is not real, and then proceeds as if now that we have conceeded this possibility, the video itself might actually be fake. Look at the next sentence, where he asks is it possible that she decided to play the damsel in distress. He wants us to think that it is the girls fault. That she could have behaved in some way that merits her beating. This is both absurd and amoral. But go back and read the paragraph I quoted again.

Did you see it? He literally says that she might have got her beating because she did NOT act out, "play the damsel in distress or blow smoke."

There is a space before the word not, indicating that TLP wrote this sentence without going back to properly read it. It came out fast, he transcribed his raw thoughts, coherence be damned. What comes out makes no sense, it's as if he wants us to think that if she did these things he just made up, it might have excused the violence. These are supposed to be legitimate reasons to beat your daughter, disguised as just a description of funny traits that drive dad mad.

TLP is writing incoherent garbage that is designed to be skimmed through and APPEAR to make sense, all you need to do is read it carefully and slowly. But what's disturbing is that TLP obviously wants to convince himself of his own confabulations.

As usual, he wants to attack the publics consumption of media, but is only ever able to mouth sneery nonsense, compliants that lack any substance. Like they weren't paying exactly the right amount of attention, or that somehow they have all these incorrect expectations of the video. They're not consuming it right, they paid "too much" attnetion to it, and it's up to TLP to tell us what the correct attitude is.

He says "i'm not excusing" the violence. Then goes onto to make excuses for it. He is trying to blame the child for her abuse, but doesn't want to admit that's what he's doing. It's disguised in this style that vacillates from flippancy to psuedo deep, precisely to cover the lack of coherence. To let him not so overtly sneak in the crudest judgements and snide remarks alongside what is supposed to be a rational discourse.

"That violence was going to come out somehow".

Maybe, but there is no reason why it had to come out on the child. There is absolutely no excuse for what the Judge did in this video, but TLP writes an apologia for the behaviour. At no point does he say that the Judge was wrong for what he did, he just says that he isn't excusing it, when that is exactly what he does.

TLP is literally angry and wants to sneer at the victim of domestic abuse for having the courage to expose it, come to terms with it and move on with her life. She has made amends with her mother, she has obviously worked through the abuse in a way that has resolved its sting for her. Please allow yourself to give pause to the fact that TLP is angry at her for this. It offends him. It might be unfair to wonder if feeling anything apart from booze and sneering offends him, but that is the persona he presents for himself. The other move he uses is a kind of tragic realism. He speaks in the tone of a sad and defeated man, who knows how bad it really is, and cannot hold back his sadness, but in his benevolence and despair shares with us the harsh truth of how it really is.

I don't doubt TLP's despair is genuine, but I also don't doubt he takes pleasure in manipulating us with it. But the answer is allways the same, narcissism = bad. It's not only false, it's simplistic and reductive. A catchphrase, a call to hate yourself in the right way, and judge others for offending you by not conforming to this standard. Perhaps he means for us to feel guilt about feeling something at all. This is so clearly the symptom of a very damaged person who can no longer deal with his own interiority. There are solutions to this, but they don't involve the online persona TLP uses to feed his own narcissism. I would suggest reflecting on why there is a need to present yourself as a hedonist first and foremost when you write. All those references to booze, the incoherent pop psychology mixed with personal animus and nasty conservatism. It has to be more miserable to write than it is to read.

The narcissism move is appealing because it makes us think that we can maintain a sort of control over all situations. If we accept TLP's "wisdom", we can fantasize about feeling no narcissism, and getting one over on suckers who do. We can fantasize about some sort of smooth, cynical attitude that lets us glide over the emotional inconsistancies of life. "You care about yourself, but I don't, so I win." It's got a feel to it like it's some prissy, childish reaction that makes us fall from detachment into the confusion of the self. Of course, it's bullshit, but its just a vague yet recurrant enough of a mantra to stick in our heads.

In TLPs world, everything is symptomatic of narcissism. He wants it to be impossible for people to feel or think anything without this being a pose, to appear "progressive" or kind or whatever. This is a common complaint of far right writers. It's a mixture of pretense, sneering and wishful thinking, they accuse everyone who expresses a remotely non conservative sentiment eg. "rascism is bad" of not actually believing that, but of instead holding that opinion because it is fashionable. Of course, the other option is that its not wishful thinking at all, but the expression of an asshole unwittingly revealing their own pyschopathy, because they really can't understand why anyone would disagree with rascism, homophobia or sexism for any other reason than an appeal to fashion. Perhaps this is the type of ignorance they would like to boast for themselves. It falls apart after the most basic contact with reality. Maybe a nice consolation fantasy for smug white male conservatives though.

There is a mysognistic streak in TLPs work, this time it's him hoping a woman will go on to committ suicide for guilt he wants her to feel for exposing her violently abusive father. Did I say hoping? Well if I play using TLPs rule book I can just make up shit and attribute it without sufficient cause. I'll instead retract it and say that TLP has constructed a fantasy of how this might play out that has the appeal of fiction, a confirmation of his wisdom and the type of tragic outcome that in his despairing benevolence he is always trying to warn us about. Or in other words, bullshit.

After the quote from Doctor Hopper:
"Note that the sentences do not logically follow one another."

Nope, they make perfect sense, but TLP is probably counting on you to have skimmed them so fast and assume that he has actually found some logical flaw in them. It is brutal because its VIOLENT (he can't really expect us to believe he doesn't understand that). It fails as a discipline tool because it's violent and unnecessary. Hey, you didn't spot that did you, but TLP just changed the context to "Does this violence fail because it cannot impose discipline?" rather than "violence itself is a failure of parenting, and has nothing to do with discipline".

"Jim Hopper's a pussy."

Did you actually think that TLP was being so crude as to call someone who voices the fact that beating a child is both violent, unnecessary and unhelpful a "pussy"? I don't think you did, I think you thought he had exposed the logical fail in some pompous blowhard talking nonsense to further his media profile. That's what TLP and probably your brain wanted you to think.

Just read it slowly and carefully. I suspect most of his audience fail to do this, and overlook or don't notice the actual opinions being voiced. Which amount to petty, crass and vicious sneering of the type one might attribute to the most cliched authoritarian asshole figure. They THINK that what's being said is actually being put across in this "Ah ha!" clever tone, this delectably sly rhetorical ballet that exposes the secret truth in a both genius yet completely obvious way. Like the rotten library crossed with Sherlock Holmes crossed with Hannibal Lector.

But it's not. It's just written to appear as such. Again, it's all there in the text if you actually read it properly. Read it and ask yourself "Do I actually agree with this?" Do you agree with what comes next, ridiculous assumptions TLP is able to divine about the sentencing behaviour of the judge? Does even he?

___

What actually happened in this video, was that a woman who was brutally beaten exposed the violence by recording it. Is there anyone here who cannot see how utterly empowering this can be for abused children? Think about all the children out there suffering sexual/physical/emotional abuse. Using webcams or phone cameras, they will be able to secretly film their abuse. How many kids will be spared from further suffering after showing such footage to a teacher/social worker etc.?

TLP is threatened by a womans ability to do this. Because he is a Christian Patriarchal guy. Its clear from his other articles he is fighting for white men like him and their right to control the meaning of media. To deem the appearance of gays as pandering to wannabe hipster liberal narcissists. None of you can pretend you didn't just see the sentence of bizarre and vile rascist bullshit in this piece. Look closely, it's all there.

His basic point in this article is that the girl is going to end up committing suicide over the guilt she should apparently feel for EXPOSING her abusive father.

TLP wants to excuse her fathers violence because the daughter did something wrong. He tries to cover himself, he won't directly admit this is his attitude, but it is. And he basically wants you to think you've seen some brilliant checkmate exposure piece that reveals the secret truth. And notice how the daugher really didn't do anything wrong, how there's no evidence that she did? TLPs' trying to edit his own version of reality. The piece is neither balanced nor considered, it's delusional and sad.

He charges her with the crime of "narcissism". Which of course only TLP can recognize and diagnose properly. It's catchy, like there's this one little pyschological trick we're all suckered by, but our wise Doctor TLP can show us how to finally break free from.

Firstly, TLP is speaking from a position of wounded narcissism in almost every article he has ever written. Secondly, narcissism in itself is not a bad thing, you can't exist without it, nor can you banish it from yourself. Thirdly, simply using it as a blanket condemnation, and believing that crushing it in yourself is the key to sanity is not only ITSELF an insane belief - spouting it is downright irresponsible for someone who is apparently a registered pyschiatrist.

Narcissism is basically self love, without some measure of that, we aren't going to do anything but linger in depressive anhedonia. TLPs angle is to pick on this and sell us feel good sneer brand snake oil. Make us feel smart, as if we've got the answer, as if it's all the fault of liberals or women or college kids, and we can judge them all now we know the magic "n" word.

You need narcissism, not unrealistic narcissism, not narcissistic pride in behaviours that are wrong. You can't be afraid to love yourself because our culture wants to enforce an aggressive hedonism. The isolation, confusion and anxiety of living cannot be remedied by such snappy quasi right wing tabloid incoherence posing as insight. TLP needs someone to step in and help him out because he's going to cling to the persona he has built and not let go. It feeds his - yes, that word we're all sick of hearing - narcissism, but it's gotten to the point where he's really stretching the limits of credulity and sense. I doubt there's anyway we could say anything that will stop him, because whatever is commented, he will keep coming back to read it. So I hope he might at least taking a break and getting his head together, at his core, he doesn't really believe the attitudes on display here, he's better than that. We have to give him the benefit of the doubt at least.

"I don't doubt TLP's despair is genuine, but I also don't doubt he takes pleasure in manipulating us with it. But the answer is allways the same, narcissism = bad."

Actually, in another article he says something to the effect that narcissism just means being the main character in your own movie, the movie can be bad or good (e.g., you could in a movie about a caring, brilliant engineer giving clean water to poor villages.)

and in yet another article (the one about faking it) he wrote: "You went to Haiti to help the refugees; great. You may have done it because you want to help; or you may have done it because it identifies you to yourself and others as a kind person, selfless, a helper. Which was it? The former comes from an external ethical structure that informs behavior. The latter is an internal identity that demands validation.

NB: the Haitians don't care either way, just show up.

Narcissism is morally neutral. Only the results can be judged. But it usually predicts: if the boat starts sinking, identity first."

On forgiving others: only when the other who wronged you has GENUINELY repaid his debt to you (in whatever way that rescues your self-worth). NOT BEFORE. Not for the sake of not feeling anger (you will only be pushing that anger deeper in your unconscious, and feel the horrible imposed manipulative obligation of being nice to your aggressor).

Remember that the debt to be repaid is proportional to the suffering perpetrated to you.

Also remember that not forgiving is NOT equivalent to holding a grudge. You can leave the past behind and be happy, without forgiving evil people who do not deserve any forgiveness.

I love this post. I relate personally...it took me a long time to shed the victim shell. I watched this video and couldn't help but think:

"Wow, she got off easy. I've had it way worse...hey isn't she playing this up just a little? She IS on camera..."

You're absolutely right (I feel like you ninja yourself into my brain with many of your posts) the victim identity will destroy you. Anything and everything I did with my life was diseased with that identity and it wasn't until I shed it all and forgave my parents for what they tried to teach that I became free. Peeking out from that shell is terrifying; it's a veil that colors how you perceive the world. That veil created and destroyed my relationships.

To this day there are ripples from that identity that I am ironing out. Hillary will get over it. The longer she keeps bringing this issue up, the longer it's thrust into her face, the longer people try to "do something about it" the longer she'll be a slave to it. Anyone who acts like a crusader for her cause in this isn't doing it for her sake, they're doing it for theirs.

The only thing to "do" is to learn from it and move on. Don't play this card anymore, your hand is done.

Plus, besides, who gives a shit? And even if you do why would you watch that video at all, ever? I beleive they hanged Saddam, brutalized Gaddafi and beat Hillary but I sure as fuck don't need to have watched them do it.

Nick: quite a tour de force, your post; good work; also, the possibility of TLP being psychotic - an interesting and plausible angle; at any rate, I do agree: it is possible that TLP may benefit from receiving help.

New rule: if you're posting at extended length, double check that you're actually speaking to someone. Why do you tacitly assume we care for or about your extended preaching opinion, that it deserves to be heard? And you called him psychotic, heh.

Damn Alone, I thought you'd gone off track there for a bit, but you brought it home, and once more, incisive commentary. Why in the world is she broadcasting this to the world? If she was just looking for an outcome the thing to do would be to go to the police or social services, or I don't know what... whatever it is (difficult question) it would be private, small scale and about outcomes, not identifiaction.

The victim stance is a stance of power, but it's still a real point of justification... and justification for what? Things you deserve, wrongs you do, a life of excuses?

I'm sure a judge's daughter would get really far going to the local police or social work department in the US with an abuse complaint, there's a reason why people with NPDs seek jobs with the authority and power of being a judge, a cop, a doctor or quite often a psychiatrist (hey, even easier to convince oneself one's a god/shaman figure, psychiatry seems to have a special appeal for people with NPDs for some pretty obvious reasons - extreme power over vulnerable people, a means to deflect attention from one's own pathology and perhaps even to understand it, claims of superior insight into reality, etc). It's a shame because it ultimately actually undermines the work of the decent, non-pathological people in these professions.

It's interesting how TLP and some of the commenters want to make what are essentially moral judgements about this girl while revealing a lack of understanding of how an abusive parent with a NPD operates and concurrent lack of compassion (or empathy) for the daughter. You are doing the abusers job for him - you've shifted the onus from the adult being abusive to the daughter revealing the abuse. The lack of insight is staggering. She's broadcasting it to the world because - like whistleblowers with information that might disappear if they're killed - it's often the broadcasting that makes one safe or at least shifts the balance of power. And her father has been telling her since day one that all her value is as an extension of him and to keep secrets to prop up his false image - she's hitting him in his false public identity, the thing he values more than his wife and child and even his own true self. What people with NPDs are trying to do is get everyone around them to be complicit in constructing and holding up the superficial public image - she essentially gave him a kick in the virtual balls and it was apparently good enough for both her and her mother to get at least some distance from him (though if he's buying her expensive cars and taking them away clearly he's moved to the attempted manipulation through money stage). It's interesting that you anyone would think she should have tried to get protection or help from a system that her father has power in and that she's more than likely to knows he abuses and manipulates for his own purposes.

DGS, On whether you might need to forgive first covering yourself and then others.

Yourself: Do you punish your self? Think very little of yourself where there is no reason to do so? Have you done something that hurt yourself? You might need to forgive yourself. Say things out loud or write them down because the first step is recognition. If you're having trouble still knowing (because your self opinion is so low that you can not recognize that it is not proportional) ask a good friend. (Or recall them telling you that you need to) And proceed to try to identify those things that you might have done or are doing to yourself that you require forgiveness for. If you're having major trouble with this therapists and pastors and priests exist for a reason.

Forgiving someone else: pretty much the same criteria as above. Unless you can't actually punish them, then perhaps you might just have thoughts along those lines. Again if you're having troubles identifying if someone has done harm to you, seek help. There are books on subjects like these (look at books based around abuse as often sufferers have issues with recognition as well) as well as actual people and I'm sure websites.

As to how, well as we said recognition is first. Admitting your own crimes against yourself is another step before you can forgive yourself for something you've done. Other steps (if you've hurt someone else and THAT also hurt you then you'll need to deal with that as well most likely)And from there it is a matter of moving forward eg whatever penance you think you need to do. (Checked with someone else to make sure it matches and isn't coming from a place of depression) Going through with said penance and then letting it go. Dropping it. If you find yourself having trouble with this, then rinse and repeat; but I do suggest getting outside help. You need to learn how to recognize when you are being mistreated by yourself and others.

Refuting the rest of your comment: my point was that TLP recently seems to only see the narcissm when there is so much more. Luckily some of the commentators do better than that (still). The (somewhat implicit) advice here was to keep the standard high or don't post at all. Otherwise the community degrades and in the end all you'll be left with will be trolls. You can tell from most of the comments already, don't you.

I posted two comments here, one on my experience with violence toward me as a young boy in school - and how I was able to hold my head up again by fighting back.

The other was about how TLP had had a different response to fighting back when a man out on a date was menaced and humiliated by a bully.

I see now that they are gone! WTF?

TLP seems to be reluctant to hear about positive outcomes resulting from violence - do people here believe that nothing good can ever come from violence?

I will expand my remarks about violence I have seen and endured:

Nuns at a Catholic - so called military academy - they would tie kids to a bed and flog them with a thick leather belt - in front of all the other kids I mentioned that I was a victim of gang violence in school when poverty lodged me in East Los Angeles.

Violence from gang members at the entirely Latino East LA high school I was forced to attend and then forced to leave because of death threats. The police had a squad car posted there every day - people were shot every now and then with "Zip Guns".

Has anyone here ever seen a gang attack? They plan it and assign roles: There is one guy to watch for cops or adults that might interfere. Another is detailed to dive for and grab your legs to bring you to the ground where you will be stomped and kicked and spat on.

The Leader starts with questions to make you answer, as a prelude to making you obey their demands, then comes the shoving which is quickly escalated to open violence. I was beaten many times until I decided to fight back.

This is what I had to do, just to go to school: The violence was so intense and frequent that I actually had to essentially armor myself with a thick leather jacket, heavy work gloves, steel toed engineers boots, a sports cup and bands of window screen wire mesh around my neck and wrists for protection against knives, razor blades, bicycle chains, kicks and blows from every direction coming from gangs of at least four and at one time fifteen. I still have scars on my arms and hands where blades got thru the protection.

I wore a heavy leather belt with a large brass buckle that served as a mace; I carried a small steel cylinder filled with lead for a knuckle backer; one kick from the boots was enough to break a leg.

The school authorities were sometimes sympathetic but always powerless to make the violence stop. The cops were indifferent. They advised me to "Ignore Them", "Take a different way to school"; they asked, "What are you doing to make them attack you."

You may all wonder why I had to do all of that, and why didn’t my mother do something? She and her boyfriend were alcoholics. And for them the issue was “But you have to go to school!’ “It’s the Law!” They abandoned me to shift for myself.

That brings me to the familial violence (beatings) I also endured for many years, from brother, sister, mother and father, until I fought back and backed them all off.

My early life was filled with abuse and violence that ranged from that inflicted by my alcoholic mother, her various drunken boyfriends- she slapped me hard once because I floored a six foot adult because he called her a whore, My jealous brother tried several times to kill me "accidentally." My sister thought beating me was OK because that’s what mother did. Once I hit back, they never hit me again.

Never in my life had I ever attacked or abused anybody but it was fight or grovel.

I sincerely believe that if I had not fought back, it was likely I would have gone on to be yet another bully and abuser. I escaped that fate with just violence against mindless rage.

Those days are gone now, but I say again: I forgave them, but only after I successfully struck back and made them all, family and gangs, stop hurting me.

Nick, interesting thought experiment ("What if TLP is just insane?"), but I think your analysis is flawed due to some substantive misreading. Here's a detailed explanation, since you requested one:

"Firstly, he shares his desire to decide what media is real and what is fictionally constructed. He did this in another post, where he quite literally said that he wants to be able to judge the real world based on stereotypes he derived from a TV show."

Not sure which one you're talking about; maybe you could source it. It is worth noting that TLP is very fond of irony. It is also worth noting that he's been railing against the very tendency you're describing for at least a year; e.g.:

"Nothing characterizes The Dumbest Generation Of Narcissists In The History Of the World better than using throw away cinema as a template for life."

This is far from an isolated example. Is it possible that you missed some irony?

Moving on:

"There is a space before the word not, indicating that TLP wrote this sentence without going back to properly read it. It came out fast, he transcribed his raw thoughts, coherence be damned. "

That is a terrifying amount of analysis for a single errant keystroke. I had no idea that extraneous spaces could be used as evidence in an argument that the author's psychotic. I have to wonder, though, do you do much recreational writing? I do, and I find that most of my written mistakes come not from publishing a hasty first draft but from hasty edits; I change something for clarity or style and forget to reconcile it with the rest of the sentence or paragraph. Seems more likely that that's the case for TLP than that that single space proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that he is raving lunatic, who is writing words on this blog only because science has not yet developed a way for him to stab us all in the face via Internet.

"Look closely. TLP, who knows the video is real, asks us to imagine it is not real, and then proceeds as if now that we have conceeded this possibility, the video itself might actually be fake [...]"

You've misunderstood him badly. The purpose of imagining that the video is "fake" is strictly to see how it alters or doesn't alter your response. He says this explicitly.

If it helps, reread the text directly after he links the video. TLP says he doesn't want to repeat what's already been said--implying he takes for granted that everyone already knows child abuse is bad, that children don't actually deserve to be beaten, and probably a few other things that would sound just as ridiculously obvious if I actually wrote them down. Assuming this sort of consensus about the obvious can be dangerously generous, when your audience can include anyone with an Internet connection, and indeed there are counterexamples in this very comment thread. However, making this assumption does have the benefit that he isn't forced to waste half his posts repeating what the majority of the civilized world already knows.

"He says "i'm not excusing" the violence. Then goes onto to make excuses for it. He is trying to blame the child for her abuse, but doesn't want to admit that's what he's doing."

Again, you've missed the generous assumptions TLP extends to his audience. He regards as a foregone conclusion that child abuse is bad and not the child's fault. He doesn't find this to be an interesting subject to talk about. There isn't much nuance to be had in that discussion. He's past it. He's more interested in the parts of the narrative that aren't blindingly obvious. The reason he's interested in them isn't so he can go back to the blindingly obvious and argue against it; the reason he's interested is that he wants to understand the girl.

Regarding the several paragraphs of yours following this, they're mostly spoken in generalities, and as such I can't easily argue for or against them. I do notice an aggregation of accusations (psychosis, racism, misogyny, homophobia, patriarchy, Christianity) which make me suspicious, because (a) these are the sorts of accusations that, by simple act of accusing, can provide an accuser with a certain mindset with an excuse for dismissing everything that the accused has to say, (b) you don't substantiate them anywhere, and (c) based on what you did try to substantiate, you seem to have thoroughly misunderstood what TLP meant. So, no, probably not a solid basis for concluding that he's psychotic.

All that said, I do think this is one of his worst posts, and that you have an at least partially valid criticism about his treatment of narcissism. TLP uses the word in an idiosyncratic fashion--he doesn't mean "self-love" or grandiosity, as in common usage; he means, as he says here, "the broadcasting of a chosen identity" and the need for others to accept and validate this identity, so that the narcissist can believe it's true. He's written elsewhere--here--

My main issue with the fixation on narcissism, defined as such, is that it's not clear how you differentiate it from whatever qualities TLP thinks people have besides narcissism. (Assuming they exist, etc.) The self is one's sole interface for accessing the world, and any reflection back on that can be construed as a reflection on one's identity; consequently, a sufficiently determined person can probably construct a plausible argument that any particular act taken by anyone is substantially driven by considerations of identity. And since the claim of narcissism is so broadly applicable, I'm not sure how informative it is; likewise, the distinction between rage and anger seems ill-defined, and differentiation thus seems somewhat arbitrary. (What does it mean to be angry in a way that's completely divorced from identity? Is the level of concern for identity a continuum?)

It certainly seems possible to overextend the claim of narcissism and the inferences one draws from it, and TLP seems to have done that in this post. In particular, as you note and as an earlier commenter showed, the guesses about the judge's leniency and sentencing patterns appear to be just factually wrong. This post aside, though, he pretty regularly constructs a plausible narrative: it turns out that assuming that a lot of people are concerned solely with how they look to others actually provides a pretty compelling model for understanding their actions. He's consistently capable of deep and brilliant insight; it just seems to be coming from a form of judgment that's subtler than the principles he articulates.

You're fucking kidding me. That's the stupidest, least moral thing I've ever seen you post. You have lost your mind. it's not easy for me to say this but perhaps you should join AA: you've clearly soaked your way brain too much and if you really believe what you just said their vapid doctrine is right up your alley.

I agree that defining yourself as a Victim is stupid and self-defeating but I'd advise "letting go," disinvesting in the pain and learning what you can from the experience. E.g., I haven't forgiven my ex-wife for what she did years ago but I have quit giving a shit. Now I see that the whole marriage-to-Becky idea was one of my most hilarious goofs: that she gave great head was not enough to justify all that and I'm glad I've never done that again.

But "forgiveness at any cost?" Fuck that. That goes way past Resentful Victim (funny you should leave out the first part of that) and too far into Willing Doormat. "Whip me, beat me, call me dirty names, and I'll always forgive you at any cost in the morning!" What kind of spineless worm would do that?

What the judge's daughter should have done is learned how to download music without getting caught and then "excommunicated" her father (and her mother if she took his side) as soon as she could grow up and get out. Then I'd advise she put it behind her as an example of bad luck ("you can't pick your parents"), think about what kind of men to avoid, what kind of shit she will not take and what kind of behaviors are counterproductive to her, and go on with the rest of her life.

And if she thinks she might need therapy to assist that I hope she has the sense to stay away from you or someone who shares your horrible opinion.

But "forgiveness at any cost?" HA. That sounds so much like a narcissistic revelation. So: have your wife and/or child forgiven you for your beatings?

Nick: "TLP is literally angry and wants to sneer at the victim of domestic abuse for having the courage to expose it, come to terms with it and move on with her life."

As they say on Fark, THIS.

I'd bet TLP's past victims still don't forgive him. Maybe for his sake they should drink more themselves or whap themselves into concussions: I can't conceive of anyone who's not very brain-damaged agreeing to "forgiveness at any cost."

TLP can now make a point and forgo the fictional conversations and replies. The comments seem to do that just fine, looking at all the rage and projecting and self-importance that quickly built up around a handful of words.

Perhaps some people confuse forgiveness and permission. Forgiveness is refusing to allow oneself to be sidetracked by the evil one has received and refusing to be vengeful or to push the pain off onto others. It is only possible with faith In Jesus Christ who bore every evil in the world. Christ is the last recipient of all pain.

Forgiveness is not telling someone that what they did was okay, justified, permitted etc. In fact true forgiveness may require some effort to convert the sinner from the error of his ways.

Gotta disagree with Alone on this one. This seemed very practical. Notice how she did an interview with her mom and the two looked very close. They've moved on from the video, there has been forgiveness, and it no longer affects their relationship (which is why they could watch it together with no malice towards each other). That Dad has been holding things over Hillary's head for a long time. First he held his power over her with a belt and shouting, and more recently, he has been using money and transportation. It has been claimed she posted that video because he was threatening to withdraw financial support. Bad move Judge! Their relationship was built on his power over her. She could receive his support so long as she allowed him to have power over her. He relinquished his power over her by withdrawing support, which was his weapon to control her. So she took back her power and struck back. He's been holding her accountable for years, and now it is going both ways. This is probably the healthiest thing she has done with her relationship with her father in years.

Geeeez. Forgiveness is the only way out??? Really. I think not. I'm a shrink too and see way too many abuse survivors suffering the consequences of failed attempts of forced forgiveness due to what the Good Book pushes. These poor, failed "faux forgivers" end up depressed, angry, on drugs, or worse because some nimrods insist they must forgive their abusers. When they discover they can't, they abuse themselves (yet, they will often claim they have forgiven the perps.). Enough already! Well, I say B.S. to that. What I do believe is they must process the emotions originating from the abuse to work through it. I never push the stereotypical forgiveness cliche'. I think Hillary set up that camera to record dear daddy during his usual mode of discipline. She knew it was coming. Plain and simple, he went on a rage filled attack. As for Hillary, she waited a long time to exact revenge. Of course, she obviously needs to process "daddy dearest" some more...

You are not concerned with how close she was with her Mother? To me, this looks like a coldly calculating pair of women. The daughter seems to have set up her father, perhaps even provoked the violence, to get him on tape. In that tape her mother clearly incites her husband. But now she realises how it looks and so has jumped ship and is trying to pass herself off as a victim too. The daughter has not forgiven her. The daughter does not care. This is about revenge against her father.

Daddy has not been holding this over her head. She has been sitting on it for years. She did not release it to the authorities. She brooded over it. She hid it. She thought about it. She dreamt about it. Until Daddy cut her off. Then she got her own back. Cold and calculating. Cutting her off was probably the smartest thing he did.

It is amazing that anyone can take this pair of borderline psychopaths can call what they did healthy. Taping your father beating you? OK. Go to the police. Waiting ten years? Not healthy. Not normal. Worse than merely narcissistic.

"Anonymous" You seem not to understand the consequences of whistle blowing on this violent parent. Did you read how the father - a judge - was letting other violent parents off and even punishing the innocent parties? Did you read how even now the police and D.A. refuse to take action, even though the statute of limitations is still active?

Hillary was smart, to be well away from her father's physical revenge, before she exposed him. There is also the matter of the younger sister's being left to face the enraged father's scapegoating.

My father-in-law is the same sort of man - all holy, moral and vengeful - I saw what he did to one of his daughters - it left her with a swollen black eye for several weeks - her spirit remains crushed to this day. Nobody dared to help her - not even her mother.

I wanted to call the police, but my wife told me that if I did that he would beat her even worse. He did not fear the police or the courts.

He had frequently beaten all of his children, if one had done something wrong, he would line them all up and beat each one until one of them would reveal the guilty child.

He is in his eighties now, and all of his children are over fifty, he can't beat them now, but he still screams at them over nothing. They all hate him, but remain in thrall to him; just as a beaten dog crawls to his master.

He literally did that to his dog too, he he would beat the animal into submission, then force him to come and cringe at his feet; and then he would beat him again.

He is a monster.

You seem to take the judge's side against his victims. Even though you saw the video, you say Hillary set him up. How could she set him up if his behavior was not habitual and predictable?

For you, the girl and her mother are the aggressors and not the victims - they are to blame for his uncontrollable rage - you are saying: "See what they made him do." You acknowledge horror of what he did, but defend him as blameless for his actions.

I would guess, from your remarks, that you identify with him and are a person who has committed similar brutalities, at some time in your life. If that is so, maybe you are a monster too!

EugeneinSanDiego, Your father in law seems monstrous indeed. What were his parents like? What about his grandparents? Did the evil start in his heart or did he inherit it? Did he pass any of it on to his children? Grandchildren? What will they do to not pass on these evil ways? God will measure the thing they do as forgiveness.

The grandparents were quiet, hard working people. He seems to be the bad seed. I don't know what made him that way. Some of his grandchildren seem to be turning out like him.

One volunteered for the Marines for the stated purpose of getting to kill people. Another used to terrorize the smaller kids.

Once I saw him push a toddler hard; the child fell and hit his head; as the child began to cry he put his hand over the child's mouth to muffle him - this while looking wildly around to see if anyone saw what he had done.

When he saw me he panicked and started to blame the child for what he had done. I told him he had done a terrible thing; he replied: "You ain't my dad." I told his dad, he didn't seem to care. He said "Don't tell my kid what to do."

I told him that if his son could not control himself, there would be people in his future who would control him - perhaps in a prison. That seemed to get his attention for a moment. Then he said "Kids are Kids.

"Do me the respect of admitting to whoever is drinking a latte next to you that if these people were black, you'd have a whole different reaction."

I'll admit it to everybody here. You've done this same thing a few times (pointed out, would your reaction here be different if these people were black?) -- and every time I'm a little disturbed that you were right. Intellectually, of course, I know that race shouldn't matter here, or ever, a beating is a beating is a beating... but on a gut level...

So I'm going to try to change that about myself. I don't always agree with you, Alone, in fact I disagree with most of this post, but your writing is still insightful and you never shy away from ugly truths. Thank you. I mean it.

No I did not read that. Nor do I believe it. Produce some evidence and I will consider it. The judge does not seem to have an unusual sentencing pattern to me. Why would the police or the DA take action? The girl is not a credible witness. She waited for almost a decade to release the tape in an effort to get even with Daddy for taking her car away. No jury is going to buy this. She cannot answer why she did not go straight to the police.

She had been away from her father for some time. But still did not feel the need to release the tape until he cut her off. You can construct a possible scenario where she had to if you like, but you have no evidence for it.

This is not about you. It is not about your father-in-law. Perhaps you need to get some emotional distance before you comment?

I am sure that she had a good idea that if she broke the law by stealing music, violating her father's rules, he was going to get pissed. And if she provoked him enough, he might lash out. Which is what seems to have happened. He does not have to be habitually violent for that to occur.

Victims? Plural? His wife is egging him on in the video. It is only when it comes out that she decides to play the victim card. As does the daughter come to that.

I am not saying see what they made him do. I am saying look what they did with what he did. I am not even defending him.

It is interesting that you need to blame me for making you uncomfortable. Avoiding the actual issues by the use of shaming language and exploiting your relatives won't make you a moral person or the issues go away. You need to deal with what is before you and not what you want it to be.

I make no claims to be a moral person - I am an angry person who sees people brutalizing weaker people, and people like you defending the indefensible.

"No I did not read that. Nor do I believe it." – “The judge does not seem to have an unusual sentencing pattern to me."

Did you look anywhere else? I did!

"The girl is not a credible witness."

The tape is a "Credible Witness.” You are saying: “Who are you going to believe, me, or you lying eyes?

Where is the “Evidence” that they conspired to hurt the father’s reputation?

The evidence of his violence on the tape destroys his reputation all by itself.

You want us to believe that Hillary “Set him up” with her mother’s cooperation; that her mother wanted to be seen striking Hillary and inciting the father to violence? Hillary got her mother to “Egg him on” because he wouldn’t have beaten her so badly otherwise?

Please!

I am sure you would not "consider" any other evidence if you saw it. Just as you would not believe the evidence of your own eyes of what you saw on the tape; that is because your goal is to redirect attention away from what we all saw, to focus blame on the response of the victims.

That is the same device you attempt to use when you say: That I am avoiding the actual issues by the use of shaming language and exploiting my relatives. Again, you attempt to shift the focus from their shameful violence to the whistleblower. You are saying: “You told on them, so you are the bad guy.” You are stuck in the mentality of a grade school bully.

The “Actual Issues” are brutal acts committed by brutal people, not the motivation of the people who expose them!

“It is interesting that you need to blame me for making you uncomfortable.”

So Much For Subtlety is doing the standard Blame The Victim dance to transfer his own anxiety at this incident onto you.

He is as corrupt as the judge he is defending, perhaps even more, because he sees evil and he deliberately and consciously denies it. He doesn't want to talk -- he just wants you to suffer for pointing out the truth to him. He'll say whatever is in his power to get you to self-attack, and to take away from the topic that causes him great anxiety -- child abuse. This is, of course, stone cold evil.

I would bet he is either a hard core abuser, or he was hard core abused and manipulated into believing that the abuse was "for his own good". Those are the only two cases that can cause a person to become evil to the point that he defends a man brutally beating a disabled child.

Now I'm not saying that he is wrong because he is evil or the victim of evil, no, not at all. He is wrong because his statements simply do not fit observable reality. He is evil because, through his actions, he is defending evil.

Don't give evil people the pleasure of attention or your emotions. Just ignore them.

I'm sure young people in Sweeden are OUT OF CONTROL! It's on all the news chanels.
I also like how "adults" act like they HAD to have children. If you do not want to deal with a child you do not like or want to manage, do not have one. Very Very Simple. If you have one and they are hyper- get a doctor to dx it with bipolar and drug it! This is the American way.
This judge is that old guy who got married and had a child he did not want in the first place so he could have some woman give him regular sex, clean his mess and cook him food. Typical lazy "victim" of children and women.
Then you have TLP acting like asked for it. Same dude. Also, why is he the "Last" psychiatrist? Is TLP so fabulaous and smart no other psychiatrist will come after him? Will everyone stop becoming psychs after reading his insightful blog?

On the contrary, I think you are. I think you are claiming to be on the side of angels by the mere fact you insist that anyone who disagrees with you must on the side of the Devil. Who is the weaker person here is an interesting question.

If you have evidence of the judge's sentencing pattern, bring it on.

The tape would have been credible if it had been released a lot earlier. The fact that it was delayed for so long does not make it credible either. No jury is going to want to get in the middle of this.

The evidence is that she released the tape when her father took away her car. And then she went on TV to stick the knife in. These are not the actions of someone in imminent danger to her life. I am sure the judge's reputation will not recover from this, but neither will his wife or daughter.

No, I do not want you to believe she set him up with her mother's co-operation. But set him up she did. I think the mother is a lot more opportunistic and switched sides to get her share of the media spot light and public sympathy. As I said. Clearly. But who knows?

My aim, in so far as I have one, is to make sure people consider the whole story - the context of that tape. When it was released, how it was made, what the thinking behind it seems to be. Not to consider the tape in isolation on its own. No more.

You are not a whistleblower. And if you don't like being accused of using shaming language, don't use shaming language. Again, what possible point is there to accusing me of being a bully except to fuel your own vision of yourself? Does it forward the conversation in any way?

The only reason you think I disgust you is your need to feel something. What is it you need to feel here?

Can you point out the evil than I am not discussing or am presently denying? Corrupt? Do you have any evidence the judge is corrupt? Or do righteous people like you win the right to throw all the accusations you like around because, like, you're so special?

This is not child abuse. Not unless you want to dumb down the definition of child abuse to the point of meaningless. What is more, it is unlikely that a jury in Texas would think it was child abuse either. Having sex with a ten year old boy in the shower, that is child abuse. Beating a child for breaking the law is what many older people would have called normal up bringing.

I am sure you would like to think I am a hard core abuser. You need to. Your bubble of self righteous anger and justification would pop if you stopped and thought about what I said. However your need to feel morally superior does not change who I am. Sadly. This is a cross you will have to carry on your own. As can be seen by the fact I am nowhere defending what the judge did.

Evil? Child abusers are sick. Is evil really the term you want to use? A little bit of a give-away don't you think?

Observable reality? I tend to think I am the only one talking about the observable reality here. Did Hilary break the law? Did she do it in violation of her father's rules? Did she secretly make that tape? Did she sit on it for almost a decade before releasing it? Did she go on TV afterwards? The answer to these questions and more is yes. That is the observable reality. Too many people here are ignoring the story and proceeding through a series of Dr Phil pop-psychology cliches as if that tells the story. It doesn't. It tells us what our cultural expectations are. No more. To consider this case, we must consider *this* case. In all its details.

So, TLP has anything re the responses here broadened your view of the "judge", his wife, and their heinous actions? I hope so. Especially if you are a practicing shrink...I have a feeling you don't report suspected child abuse as much as you should even though you are a mandated reporter. I hate having to report when other so called mental health professionals fail to do so.

One question for you. Would it be OK to start physically flogging adults when they fail to behave? Ask the "judge" and his sweet wife when we can do their first smackdowns (on Youtube perhaps)...

Point out where I blame the victim. However being a victim does not make someone blameless.

That she kept the tape for nearly a decade and then released it is not an allegation. It is, in so far as we can tell, a fact. And it is a disturbing fact. That she set up her father is not open to dispute either - we have the tape. The tape that she set up.

The tape is never the whole story. Mitigating? I am still not defending the father. You can't get over your need to think I am. Why? Spare me the Dr. Phil cliches. You have a sad need. You should exercise it with someone else.

It is nice you have a goal. But the story here is not me. Nor is it you, although I doubt you will see it that way. The story is about this damaged family.

To point out that this girl, and more so her mother, is calculating and even, dare I say it? narcissistic, is not defending the father. No matter how important it is to you to think so.

Why do you often say she kept the tape for nearly a decade? Why not say she kept it for seven years? Because you are projecting this to the story you want it to be.

Whether or not the tape is staged or not it does demonstrate a genuine lack of control on his part. It is true that this one tape does not provide sufficient information to discern whether such punishment was frequent or not. It is also true that it suggests a more concerning behavior on the part of the judge than the girl, to myself and many others.

I'm not particularily thrilled with people referring to her as a disabled girl. Wording it that way is same sort of thing as saying it was ten years not seven years, telling the narrative you want to tell.

If this was a frequent occurrence then sitting on the tape for seven years is not really that surprising. Just knowing you have the tape can be a comfort. Further actually using the tape can be rather destructive, not just for the abuser but for the abused.

One thing about many cases of abuse is that if the abused seek or get help, often the child can find themselves disowned. Often one parent is the abuser but the other is complicit in the abuse. Their identity gets tied up with the abuser and something that threatens the abuser will be a threat to them as well. My understanding (from personal experience and from what I have learned from others) is that very often the abuser and those complicit with it will just disown the abused for "bring family matters outside the family".

My abusive grandmother told me she wasn't going to buy me any presents or give me any more money, unless I straightened up. Since I wasn't always within her domain I was perhaps able to recognize that this was a good thing and I very much hoped that she would follow through with her promise. If I lived with her all of the time, it might have been a different story.

While I can appreciate that you are trying to look beyond one side, I don't really feel like you have really looked enough at the reality of abuse is like.

I can say this and not be 100% sure that there was abuse. But I'm far more inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt then him.

Why do you often say she kept the tape for nearly a decade? Why not say she kept it for seven years? Because you are projecting this to the story you want it to be.

Whether or not the tape is staged or not it does demonstrate a genuine lack of control on his part. It is true that this one tape does not provide sufficient information to discern whether such punishment was frequent or not. It is also true that it suggests a more concerning behavior on the part of the judge than the girl, to myself and many others.

I'm not particularily thrilled with people referring to her as a disabled girl. Wording it that way is same sort of thing as saying it was ten years not seven years, telling the narrative you want to tell.

If this was a frequent occurrence then sitting on the tape for seven years is not really that surprising. Just knowing you have the tape can be a comfort. Further actually using the tape can be rather destructive, not just for the abuser but for the abused.

One thing about many cases of abuse is that if the abused seek or get help, often the child can find themselves disowned. Often one parent is the abuser but the other is complicit in the abuse. Their identity gets tied up with the abuser and something that threatens the abuser will be a threat to them as well. My understanding (from personal experience and from what I have learned from others) is that very often the abuser and those complicit with it will just disown the abused for "bring family matters outside the family".

My abusive grandmother told me she wasn't going to buy me any presents or give me any more money, unless I straightened up. Since I wasn't always within her domain I was perhaps able to recognize that this was a good thing and I very much hoped that she would follow through with her promise. If I lived with her all of the time, it might have been a different story.

While I can appreciate that you are trying to look beyond one side, I don't really feel like you have really looked enough at the reality of abuse is like.

I can say this and not be 100% sure that there was abuse. But I'm far more inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt then him.

Why do you often say she kept the tape for nearly a decade? Why not say she kept it for seven years? Because you are projecting this to the story you want it to be.

Whether or not the tape is staged or not it does demonstrate a genuine lack of control on his part. It is true that this one tape does not provide sufficient information to discern whether such punishment was frequent or not. It is also true that it suggests a more concerning behavior on the part of the judge than the girl, to myself and many others.

I'm not particularily thrilled with people referring to her as a disabled girl. Wording it that way is same sort of thing as saying it was ten years not seven years, telling the narrative you want to tell.

If this was a frequent occurrence then sitting on the tape for seven years is not really that surprising. Just knowing you have the tape can be a comfort. Further actually using the tape can be rather destructive, not just for the abuser but for the abused.

One thing about many cases of abuse is that if the abused seek or get help, often the child can find themselves disowned. Often one parent is the abuser but the other is complicit in the abuse. Their identity gets tied up with the abuser and something that threatens the abuser will be a threat to them as well. My understanding (from personal experience and from what I have learned from others) is that very often the abuser and those complicit with it will just disown the abused for "bring family matters outside the family".

My abusive grandmother told me she wasn't going to buy me any presents or give me any more money, unless I straightened up. Since I wasn't always within her domain I was perhaps able to recognize that this was a good thing and I very much hoped that she would follow through with her promise. If I lived with her all of the time, it might have been a different story.

While I can appreciate that you are trying to look beyond one side, I don't really feel like you have really looked enough at the reality of abuse is like.

I can say this and not be 100% sure that there was abuse. But I'm far more inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt then him.

“Point out where I blame the victim. However being a victim does not make someone blameless.”

So you agree she was a victim, right? And, I never said she was blameless

"I am nowhere defending what the judge did"

"Beating a child for breaking the law is what many older people would have called normal up bringing."

Your own words!

Were you “normally” beaten, and do you “normally” beat children?

“That she kept the tape for nearly a decade and then released it is not an allegation…”
“…it is a disturbing fact.”

That she kept it (for seven years) is the fact; the “allegation” is the motivation you allege she had for releasing it; and yes, I can see that it should disturb child abusers everywhere.

“The story is about this damaged family.”

The story is about a father – a Judge - beating a handicapped child; no matter how hard you try to spread the blame.

“To point out that this girl, and more so her mother, is calculating and even, dare I say it? Narcissistic…”

Given her father’s personality, she may well be narcissistic; that is beside the point, we do not beat children (or adults, for that matter) for being narcissistic. I do not say she should not have been punished, but factually, Hillary was attacked viciously and repeatedly. Since she could not resist physically she used the means available to her - her mind and her computer – to keep from being reduced to abject groveling. And I say, good for her.

“But the story here is not me”

It wasn’t about you, but it looks like it’s starting to be a story about a person who persistently refuses to acknowledge that the vicious, drunken beating of a helpless child – by a father – a judge -invested with the power and duty of justice was wrong.

You said: ("Beating a child for breaking the law is what many older people would have called normal up bringing.") And it turns out, you are right – read on! It will be long, but well worth the investment to see where these evil ideas are coming from!

Because you seem to be very heavily invested soft-pedaling- even justifying the violence we saw; I have a feeling that the teachings of the discipline guides, named in the article. below, are where you are coming from.

I was doing some research on child beating and came across this: Beating Babies in the Name of Jesus? The Shady World of Right-Wing 'Discipline' Guides. It begins: “There is a brutal movement in America that legitimizes child abuse in the name of God.”

...The popular evangelical authors Michael and Debi Pearl. In their book To Train Up a Child (1994) they advocate beating babies.

In the book they recommend, "switching" a 7-month-old on the bare bottom or leg seven to eight times as a punishment for getting angry. If the baby is still angry, the urge parents to repeat the punishment until the child gives in to the pain. The "switch” they recommend for an under 1-year-old is from a willow tree and/or a 12-inch ruler.

Evidently, the belt is to be saved for teenagers.

A few excerpts:

…“The parents allegedly used a 15-inch length of plastic tubing used for plumbing to beat the children, a practice recommended in the book "To Train Up a Child" by Michael and Debi Pearl of "No Greater Joy Ministries."

…“Mr. Pearl, who has no degree or training in child development, writes in his book that he and his wife used "the same principles the Amish use to train their stubborn mules" -- namely, "switches."

…As the Times illustrates -- "Preaching Virtue of Spanking, Even as Deaths Fuel Debate" -- the books of Michael Pearl and his wife Debi have been found in the homes where several children were killed.

…There's also the work of evangelical "family values" guru Bill Gothard, with a following of millions. As reported by the Cincinnati Beacon, Matthew Murray, the young shooter who killed a bunch of churchgoers in 2007, had been raised according to the teachings of evangelist Bill Gothard.

…"I remember the beatings and the fighting and yelling and insane rules and all the Bill Gothard rules and then trancing out," he wrote Dec. 1 under the monicker "nghtmrchld26" on a Web forum for former Pentecostal Christians.

That’s right, you read it correctly – “a parallel between beating children and beating dogs”

Dog Beating according to Dobson:

"I had seen this defiant mood before, and knew there was only one way to deal with it. The ONLY way to make Siggie obey is to threaten him with destruction. Nothing else works. I turned and went to my closet and got a small belt to help me 'reason' with Mr. Freud.

"What developed next is impossible to describe. That tiny dog and I had the most vicious fight ever staged between man and beast. I fought him up one wall and down the other, with both of us scratching and clawing and growling and swinging the belt. I am embarrassed by the memory of the entire scene. Inch by inch I moved him toward the family room and his bed. As a final desperate maneuver, Siggie backed into the corner for one last snarling stand. I eventually got him to bed, only because I outweighed him 200 to 12! "But this is not a book about the discipline of dogs; there is an important moral to my story that is highly relevant to the world of children. JUST AS SURELY AS A DOG WILL OCCASIONALLY CHALLENGE THE AUTHORITY OF HIS LEADERS, SO WILL A LITTLE CHILD -- ONLY MORE SO." [Emphasis Dobson's]”

Dobson, the Pearls and Gothard both have a big followings in Rick Perry's hang-em'-high "Christian" Texas. And Texas is where evangelical leader Gary North is based as he writes and preaches his Reconstructionist/Dominionist theology about applying literal Old Testament law -- including the EXECUTION of "incorrigible youths" -- as mandated by the Bible.

So, Dobson is another monster, among numerous other Anti-Christ Christians!

I recommend reading it, to all reading here, who have a strong stomach.

Alternatively, it can, and probably will, be read as child porn, pure and simple.

I feel all the above is claptrap bs. The weak manipulating the weak. When I was a child, and respected authority, I could bring a 22 rifle to class to show it off. I would be smacked for not having a knife on me. The wusses of the world who masturbate regarding how awful things have become for the USA, please get out of the way before I take you out of the way. This claptrap bs is why psychiatry is the losingest specialty. Hell, we can't even agree to zip up our pants, much less argue for free trade of our trade, reasonable pay for our trade, freedom to practice our trade.

This was not a rage, but a deliberate attempt to punish a 16 year old daughter who deliberately endangered the family by doing something illegal...downloading music. And her response, to reveal the tape after he threatens to withdraw her funds after she drops out of school 2 credits shy of graduating. Have you people no common sense.

Makes me angry to see America weakened by this political correctness, no one has to take responsibility (like the girl) read her Dad's response. But then again, you guys will probably fret regarding her harm (none I might add) and her justification for putting it on the net 7 years after it was done to her - she is going to lose her Mercedes, but did anyone notice that...no. Pity, what America has become.

Ah, I knew it was just a matter of time before the death threats started. It's so "American." At least it's a polite one - he did say please, right?

Maybe you know why he turned the light off before his "Deliberate attempt to punish a 16 year old daughter?" Is that how it's done in your America, close all the windows, pull the shades down, turn Rush up high, turn the lights off, and flog away?

She is being treated as if she is blameless. And your passive aggressive "when did you stop beating your wife" question tells us more about you than about what I said.

Actually her motivation is also a matter of fact. She has said so.

No, the story is not about the father. This thread seems to want to make it about us - or rather every poster to make is about themselves. But even if we ignore the ego-surfing that is going on, this is still not just about the father. There were three participants in that video. Each of them has their contribution to make.

Of course it is the point and we do beat children for being narcissistic depending on the form it takes. Well, when I say "we" I mean people as a whole. Let us agree she was attacked physically and at length. She did not use the means available to her. That is the point. She did not go to the police which would have made the beatings stop. They clearly were not so common or so bad she felt she had to. She kept the tape for the right moment - the right moment to serve her needs.

You can insist this is about you and you can continue to get angry at people who shake the foundations of your self righteous world, but it still going to be about them. Not me. Not you.

The fact that you like reading so much about Christian child-beating, for want of a better word, porn is interesting. Maybe that is why you are getting so upset. You want to project your disgust at yourself on to a recognisable minority *and* feel self righteous at the same time. Great. Reasonable comment makes you think about why you do what you do. But it is not really helping, is it?

Thank you for sharing to us.Please one more post about that..This is really a fascinating blog, lots of stuff that I can get into. One thing I just want to say is that your Blog is so perfect!caiyifang/comment201111

Because I can't be bothered to work out exactly how long she had it for. What do you think it is I am projecting by the minor difference between seven and ten years?

It does demonstrate a genuine lack of control on the father's part. For which he ought to be ashamed. It also does not show what she may have done to provoke him to rage.

I agree about the repeated references to her disability. As it has no direct bearing on the issue, I assume it is just so that people can stress how virtuous they are in coming to the rescue of a disabled Princess. The White Knight syndrome. That is not wrong, or invalid, but it is a bias.

I am sure sitting on the tape was a comfort. But think in what way it was a comfort. She knew she could ruin her father and she waited for the right time. Taking comfort from that thought. And when it came, her mother promptly abandoned her husband and went on national TV with her daughter as some sort of co-victim.

Which is why I don't think the language of abuse and abuser is useful any more. It is used too widely and too casually. It is applied to too many behaviors. It is a substitute for genuine thought rather than an aid. It is even less helpful to talk about the mother being complicit unless you mean in the direct sense that she had a choice and she made one she regretted when the national media found out.

Would you think she is blameless if this type of abuse had been going on for her entire life? Do you even think it's possible she has? And perhaps that her previous experiences within this family has shaped her as a person?

Perhaps her father has been subjected to the same treatment as he subjected her to, from a very young age, too. If that's the case, the cycle has repeated itself, then......except the daughter isn't making decisions about other people's families in a professional capacity (unlike her father, who was, as a Judge). Instead, her rage/revenge is directed at her OWN family, and the system which allowed him to get where he is.

Do you really think, had she gone to the police, they would have actually protected her?

Considering the power differential, I think she's a victim who fought back in the most effective way possible (humiliating him publicly), using whatever tools were available to her (technology).

I think she's a genius, and I wish I'd had the smarts and the tools stop my step-father - the only thing I could do was move away asap. He divorced my mother 10 years ago, and I hear he's moved on to another family now. I hope his 2 new step-daughters are OK. And I hope their father is still alive, and willing/able to be a part of their lives.

"She is being treated as if she is blameless" and "It also does not show what she may have done to provoke him to rage"

Actually, who said she was "blameless"? You keep saying that as though someone posting here actually said that. Who used the word “blameless” – other than you of course? Who said that please?

You keep using “blameless” in a way that unmasks your belief that any child could actually do something blameworthy enough to provoke such a savage beating.

You want to know what provoked his rage? How about this: she refused to lie on a bed, in a dark room, while she was being beaten!

And, we see that, now, you agree that his motivation was an uncontrolled rage - that (in your words) “He should be ashamed of” - and not “normal discipline”, right?

As always, you steadfastly blame the victim, and apologize for the father, with: "See what she made him do."

"And your passive aggressive "when did you stop beating your wife" question tells us more about you than about what I said."

The puerile example you quote above is called "Begging The Question" - that is to say it takes for granted that you have beaten your wife.

Just a simple yes or no answers the question I actually asked - and that was: "Were you beaten, as a child, and do you, or have you beaten - children?"

"She did not go to the police which would have made the beatings stop"

Yes, we are all sure the police would put a stop to a judge beating his child. Didn't you assure us that the beating was “normal" and that no jury would ever convict the father (in Texas)? Which is it please?

"I assume it is just so that people can stress how virtuous they are in coming to the rescue of a disabled Princess"

That's just a sneer; It requires only a decent person to defend a child; it does not require a "White Knight"; to "come to the rescue" of an abused child - able or disabled.

But, given your scorn for “White Knights”, even though you agree she was attacked; I wonder: would you care to be included among “Decent People?” Whadya say?

"The fact that you like reading so much about Christian child-beating, for want of a better word, porn is interesting"

And so is your slithering response - interesting I mean. Talk about begging the question!

I looked up what a previous commenter mentioned about "Training Up A Child". To read what people, who claim to be Christians, do to children was stunning, horrific and sickening. I am sure that almost all of those commenting here would be shocked and stunned by what is written in “Discipline Manuals.”

On the other hand, most reading here will notice that mention of child porn seems to have elicited a titillated response from you. Your response says: See!!! See!!! He likes child porn!!! It reveals that, for you, the subject matter of those degenerate books is something to snark about.

It shows that you are not shocked and disgusted that a recognizable, so-called "Christian" minority advocates beating infants and even executing unruly children!

I wonder if anyone else has noticed the Herman Cain-ish retreat of your position and remarks here. As did the Hermanator, you began with stout denials that anything bad had been done; that the (I must use the word: “father”) had only employed “normal” discipline that no judge or jury would condemn or prevent.

In your recent post the facts have forced you to acknowledge it was a violent attack that the perpetrator should “Be ashamed of” and that notifying the police would have prevented.

And, like Herman, while retreating from untenable positions, you steadfastly blame and mock the victim.

Watching you and Herman unravel, is like watching a frog twitch and writhe as it is being dissected; well, more like a toad actually!

What tortuous mind you have, and what a tortured life you must lead. I would pity you, for you are obviously a victim of abuse, but it is impossible to pity a self-righteous defender of child abuse.

It was “Phillip” that said: “This is not a savage beating. It is a father disciplining a willfully disobedient child.”

It was “Ttang” that said: This was not a rage, but a deliberate attempt to punish a 16 year old daughter.

And it was “So Much For Subtlety” that said: Beating a child for breaking the law is what many older people would have called normal up bringing.

I got some of my notes mixed, but my I think my replies fit all three of them just as well, since they were all saying the same thing for the same reasons. Some might say: Look he mixed those three up! For me, it is a distinction without a difference.

I was beaten like that by my parents, though physical beatings like that stopped long before I got to her age. So what did I feel? Real fear for her,and a great deal of anger, and I turned off the video long before it ended.
I can understand what may have driven her to post it. And part of that is about reclaiming herself. Most people walk around with the idea that their body is sacred and inviolate, she clearly has never had that luxury. When she was ready, she did the one thing she could think of that would scare her parents enough to get them to stop assaulting her. And it takes courage, very likely there was something else done to trigger enough anger to lend her that courage.

For everyone who thinks of this as discipline, its assault straight up. Is there any other place where one human can beat another with a belt and not be charged with assault? No. Its the ploy of bullies to beat on weaker people and our society allows this because children are the only victims who can't run away.

This so called "father" was obviously in a rage and out of control. Who knows how many other times he has beaten this child...Yes, child. And the mother was no help. What happens to make people behave in this manner...? Can they not see they are using another human being as their scapegoat? This entire video makes me sick. There is NO excuse for this vile behavior. i was physically and emotially abused when i was young and learned only to fear my mother as a result. That is what i learned.

And, this is NOT "discilpine"-this is punishment, pure and simple. Discipline comes from the word "Disciple", which means "to follow", a form of teaching one, not terrorizing and brutalizing one.

If this is what people believe Christianity is...i want no part of their "Christian" world.

Perhaps people should try to fix their own problems first before dipping their nose into other people's problems...who am I kidding? Fixing our own problems is costly and difficult, it's best to use other people's troubles to make ourselves feel better. :D

1) How about fewer beatings for black and non-black kids, versus an acceptance of white kids getting beaten because black kids get beaten all the time? Not that the latter eventuality is what you meant. But I'm not sure why else you'd toss the black beating thing in there.

2) How do you think that the daughter is broadcasting herself as a victim? Sure, the tape shows her being beaten with a belt. But she took that tape and put it online. That's active. That's not passive. That's a step away from victimhood.

3) "He just needs help" sounds pretty level-headed--even, gasp!, forgiving--of the kid to me. Not really feeling the rage in her words.

What's wrong with that? He also uses "worldly" (if you can call it that) analogies all the time. He calls himself a drunk, has watched NC-17 movies, talks about masturbation all the time; but you, you're concerned that he talks about God, or morality?

The reason it bothers me that you ask this question is because it feels like that is how the world is, that if I believe in God, BAM! I'm irrational and stupid.
Now, though, a man of obvious intelligence and perception might be *gasp* a Christian, but will you then accept that a Christian can be intelligent and rational, or will you dismiss him as a nutter and disregard all of his insight, irrespective of how amazing it is?

But they were ALWAYS going to judge her. Watching a video as horrendous as this requires you to make a value judgement. And what's telling about one's worldview/past experiences is what side they take: "she was just being punished for her disobedience" vs "this guy is an abusive asshole."

I think TLP has engaged in some major assholery this time. First rule EVERYONE knows that an abused person should keep in mind: You DO NOT keep your persecutors' dirty little secrets for them. You do NOT work for the enemy. It's THEIR abuse, let THEM explain it,justify it,try to rationalize it away -IF THEY DARE. IF THEY THINK THEY CAN. If what they are doing to someone else is so great, why hide it? There is safety in making certain things public knowledge. There is no excuse to hide it-why would you? For "the sake of appearances"?. Isn't that exactly what TLP says is a narcissist's M.O.? Always putting energy into maintenance of appearance at all costs? So, you blow their cover. TLP talks crap and has obviously not experienced this kind of thing ,otherwise he would know that that's EXACTLY how you shut that s***t down.That is exactly how you close down a narcissist's act and I can say that with authority because I had the misfortune to grow up with TWO of them. They were my parents and theyhated me for seeing through them. Their constant exhortations and mental abuse were all geared towards trying to convince me that I did not see in what I saw about our family life. Didn't work. My one parent's alcoholism didn' really get addressed until I finally told the last bunch of EMTs who came for them for the umpteenth time that the "sickness" was rampant alcoholism. After I "told" on them and wouldnt enable or hide it any more for the sake of the " family reputation" then they HAD to face it. When I realized that it was not my job to be ashamed for them (and beleive me,alcoholics are some of the WORST narcissists EVER) then and ONLY then did the person have to deal with it The secret was out and they could not hide it. I am suspicious that TLP ia an alcoholic too because his commentary and POV sound so familiar. I think TLP needs to only approach this blog when he/she is not in his/her cups. TLP, why don't you lay off the sauce and cut the b*******t. Physician, heal thyself. You don't fool me. Has anyone ever heard the term "a mean drunk"? I think TLP is just that and imagines that he/she can be cunning enough to hide it. WRONG.

It's interesting, because your vague description of the results of forgiveness (continued harassment or abuse) lacks any solid quantification of forgiveness.
Does forgiveness simply mean to allow the beatings to continue? Or just supplication?

I'll give you a hint: You can kill a man, and still forgive him.

Forgiveness is not about yielding, forgiveness is not about HIM, it's about YOU.

If my father tried to beat me and I punched him in the jaw, I could go to his hospital bed, his jaw wired shut, and say, "I forgive you for trying to beat me, but if you try to lay a hand on me again, you'll know what will happen."

Your definition of forgiveness is wrong, or rather, you don't -have- a definition of forgiveness.